Several interpretations of the ending have been proposed.[17] Jonathan Post claims the poem ends with a sort of retrospective picture of the poet having "sung" the poem into being.[18] According to critic Lauren Shohet, Lycidas is transcendently leaving the earth, becoming immortal, rising from the pastoral plane in which he is too involved or tangled from the objects that made him.[8] She claims that "he is diffused into, and animates, the last location of his corpse—his experience of body-as-object… neither fully immanent (since his body is lost) nor fully transcendent (since he remains on earth)."[19]
With an ambiguous ending, the poem does not just end with a death, but instead, it just begins.[20] The monody clearly ends with a death and an absolute end but also moves forward and comes full circle because it takes a look back at the pastoral world left behind making the ambivalence of the end a mixture of creation and destruction.[21] Nonetheless "thy large recompense" also has a double meaning. As Paul Alpers states, Lycidias' gratitude in heaven is a payment for his loss.[22] The word "thy" is both an object and mediator of "large recompense." Thus, the meaning also maintains the literal meaning which is that of a sacred higher being or the pagan genius.[23]
The final lines of the poem:
- And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
- And now was dropt into the Western bay;
- At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:
- To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new
may refer to Milton's imminent departure to Italy, and they are reminiscent of the end of Virgil's 10th Eclogue,
| Surgamus; solet esse gravis cantantibus umbra;iuniperi gravis umbra; nocent et frugibus umbrae.Ite domum saturae, venit Hesperus, ite capellae. | Come, let us rise: the shade is wont to bebaneful to singers; baneful is the shadecast by the juniper, crops sicken tooin shade. Now homeward, having fed your fill —eve's star is rising – go, my she-goats, go. |
