Summary

The speaker shifts the focus of the poem once more, moving on from "the dread voice" of Saint Peter and once again calling on the muses and the gods to help mourn Lycidas (132). He asks the valleys to send forth all their funeral flowers, listing them one by one as they will "strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies" (151). This tradition of decorating the casket with funeral flowers will, the speaker hopes, help ease the pain of losing Lycidas. But he soon realizes that there is no casket to decorate and that Lycidas's body is likely spread out all over the earth after having died at sea. The speaker imagines all the places his body could be before resigning himself to asking the dolphins to "waft the hapless youth" (164).

Changing directions once more, the speaker instructs his fellow shepherds to "weep no more" (165). He...