Milton republished the poem in his 1645 collection Poems of Mr. John Milton. To this version is added a brief prose preface:
- In this MONODY the Author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish seas, 1637. And by occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height.[28]
When Milton published this version, in 1645, the Long Parliament, to which Milton held allegiance, was in power; thus Milton could add the prophetic note—in hindsight—about the destruction of the "corrupted clergy," the "blind mouths" (119) of the poem.
