I. The first personal voice complains of being unready to perform his task.
a. The personal voice complains of having "rude" fingers, and of being "forc'd" into action. Both complaints are dualistic.
i. Line 4 reads "And with forc'd fingers rude." This may mean that the fingers were forced by the speaker himself, implying that it's him who used his fingers forcefully to pluck the berries. More extensively, it may mean that some external force forced the speaker to use his fingers …show more content…
Since laurel, myrtle and ivy do not mellow, "mellowing season" must refer to something besides the above plants.
1. It refers to the mellowing years of the speaker himself. His writing for Lycsidas abstracts him from his true interests; his inability to progress his true interests causes him to complain about the abstractiveness of the task of speaking on Lycidas' behalf. ii. The tone progresses from ironic to bitterly ironic when we reach line 7, "disturb your season due."
1. The speaker treats Lycidas' death as if its a distraction from his true interests. Out of reluctance, he's compelled to give voice to his "melodious tear."
c. The voice in The Reason of Church Government is opposed to the threat of work threatening distractions, initially.
i. In The Reason of Church Government, he writes, he tells us, "out of mine own season, when I have neither completed to my mind the full circle of my private studies." Later he tells us he would rather be "soaring high in the high region of his fancies with his garland and singing robes about him.
1. He writes reluctantly, for he'd rather be reading other things or furthering a more personal project, but, from the vantage point of truth, realizes his forced project to be "no disruption at all, simply a continuity of duty and …show more content…
He fails to recognize his membership with Lycidas as a whole; he desires to be distinct and individual.
II. The first voice attempts to resist "assimilation" into an anonymous second voice. The speaker’s grappling with his ego or principium individuationis is his desire to remain distinct or individual.
a.The first voice attempts to distance itself from the conventions of pastoral poetry by assuming an ironic voice; this ironic voice tries to establish superiority over the pastoral (or the limitations of its poetic form) by assuming a "perspective of privilege."
i. The ironic voice's "perspective of privilege" subverts the pastoral voice by exposing its fictions and false surmises.
1. For example, in lines 11-12, he subverts "He must not float on his wat'ry bier" with the enjambed condition, "Unwept." The condition undermines the definiteness of "…must not float..." because it applies a condition which changes the meaning of the statement from "He must not float..." to "He must not flow...unwept." The former statement implies that he must not float under any condition while the latter implies that he must not float under the condition of being