Elegia tertia. English translation. Back to Latin text. Open Latin text in new window.

Introduction. This poem eulogizes Lancelot Andrewes, who died on October 25, 1626, when Milton was almost eighteen years old and in his third (but second full) year at Cambridge. Like the others for whom Milton composed elegies that autumn, University Beadle Richard Ridding (see Elegy 1) and Dr. John Gostlin (see the first poem in Sylvarum), Bishop Andrewes was a Cantabrigian having been master of Pembroke College from 1595 until 1605. He also had been Bishop of Chichester and Ely before becoming Bishop of Winchester.

Andrewes was a conservative bishop whose career was advanced under James I. He argued strenuously against Puritan proposals for further church reform and defended the divine right of monarchy. William Laud, the reactionary Archbishop of Canterbury under Charles I, was one of Andrewes's followers. Milton argues specifically against Andrewes in his Reason of Church Government.

The translation follows that of Walter MacKellar with a few changes based on consulting The Columbia Milton and Merritt Y. Hughes.

Libitina. In ancient Rome, Libitina was the goddess of death and funerals. London was struck by a severe outbreak of the plague in 1625-26.

lost leaders. Merrit Y. Hughes suggests these "lost leaders" may be Count Ernest of Mansfield, killed November 29, 1626, and Duke Christian of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel who dies June 6, 1626. Both supported James I's son-in-law, the Elector Palatine.

Tartarean Jove. Pluto, the ruler of Hades. Milton used the epithet "neather Jove" in A Mask 20.

Cypris. Venus.

dumb herds. Seals; as in Damon's Epitaph 99. See also Spenser's Faerie Queene 3.8.30.1, where Proteus is called the "Shepheard of the seas of yore."

Hesperus. The evening star.

daughter of Thaumas. Iris, personified in the rainbow.

Chloris. The goddess of flowers was wooed by Zephyr the west wind, according to Ovid's Fasti 5.95-398.

garden of Alcinous. In Homer's Odyssey 7.115-33, Odysseus visits the palace gardens of Alcinous, King of the Phaikians. It is a near-paradisal garden of perpetual harvest. See also Paradise Lost 5. 340-41 and 9.441.

Hesperian Tagus. The Tagus river reaches the Atlantic Ocean at Lisbon. Ovid, in Metamorphoses 2.251, describes its golden sand.

Favonius. Latin equivalent to Zephyr or west wind.

Lucifer. The brightest morning star, or another name for Venus as in Metamorphoses 2.723.

from hard labor henceforth and for ever be free. Compare this to Revelation 14.13.

mistress of Cephalus. According to Ovid's Metamorphoses 7.700-13, Aurora, goddess of the dawn, was the lover of Cephalus.

May such dreams often return. This almost exactly translates the final line of Ovid's Amores 1.5.26.