A particularly elegiac moment in Milton’s mournful Lycidas can be found when his ‘uncouth swain’ movingly implores Alpheus (the ‘Sicilian muse’) to raise himself from the ground and compel a number of radiant flowers to chastise themselves in memory of his dead friend.1¹ In a line which can be easily overlooked within Milton’s wide-reaching botanical list is the desire that Alpheus might ‘Bid amaranthus his beauty shed’.2² While editors of Lycidas have linked this passage to Paradise Lost, where the amaranth makes another appearance as the immortal flower of heaven, its deeper classical roots and subsequent history of humanist and poetic reception have been largely overlooked. Moreover, while the appearance of the ‘amaranthus’ has been linked to poetic death in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the striking differences between how the Faerie Queene and Lycidas allude to the amaranth have remained unnoticed. By investigating the context behind Milton’s allusion in Lycidas, we not only further reveal the range of the poet’s erudition but also discover how he fundamentally reshapes the flower’s pagan and poetic symbolism to new ends. Simultaneously, we uncover an anti-Spenserian dirge which subverts the very terms of Spenserian pastoralism on which Lycidas seems to rely.

中文翻译：

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弥尔顿的 Lycidas 中的反斯宾塞苋菜

在弥尔顿悲痛的Lycidas中可以找到一个特别悲痛的时刻，他的“粗鲁的 swain”动人地恳求 Alpheus（“西西里的缪斯女神”）从地面上站起来，迫使一些容光焕发的花朵自责，以纪念他死去的朋友。 1 ^{1在 Milton 广泛的植物学清单中，有一条很容易被忽视的是，Alpheus 可能会“将苋菜卖给他的美丽小屋}” 。2 ²虽然Lycidas的编辑将这段话与失乐园联系起来，苋菜再次以不朽的天堂之花出现，其更深的古典根源以及随后的人文主义和诗意接受的历史在很大程度上被忽视了。此外，虽然“苋菜”的出现与斯宾塞的《仙后》中诗意的死亡有关，但仙后和Lycidas对苋菜的暗指之间的显着差异仍未引起注意。通过调查弥尔顿在Lycidas中的典故背后的背景，我们不仅进一步揭示了诗人博学的范围，而且还发现了他如何从根本上重塑花朵的异教和诗意象征主义以达到新的目的。同时，我们发现了一首反斯宾塞式的挽歌，它颠覆了Lycidas似乎依赖的斯宾塞式畜牧业的术语。