"Lycidas" was originally published in a poetic miscellany alongside thirty-five other poems elegizing the death of Edward King. Collected at Cambridge, most of the poems were written by academics at the university who were committed to the conservative church politics of Archbishop Laud. Among the poets were John Cleveland, Joseph Beaumont, and Henry More.[24] Milton, on the other hand, who reported that he had been "Church-outed by the prelates,"[25] had failed to achieve a position at Cambridge after his graduation, and his religious views were becoming more radical. The style and form of his poem also strongly contrasts from the other texts in the collection. While most of the poetry adopts a baroque aesthetic linked to the Laudian ceremonialism that was in vogue in the 1630s, Milton wrote "Lycidas" in the outmoded pastoral style.[26] "Lycidas" may actually be satirizing the poetic work featured throughout the Justa Edouardo King Naufrago.[27]
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