It is the nature of pastoral poetry that human desires are projected into a natural environment and experienced only through fantasy. The real world, full as it is of unpredictability and unwanted emotions, is accessible to all, while the pastoral idyll is preserved "for the fantasies of poets"; his ground must not be trampled by all (Ettin 43). After failing to retreat into the traditional pastoral landscape, John Milton begins, in his poem “Lycidas,” to exert the control he does not have in the real world over the elements of the pastoral, challenging the usual idyllic landscape and transforming it into one. of mourning. Andrew Ettin, author of the book Literature and the Pastoral, addresses the idea of ​​a person who uses the pastoral world as an “emblem of his pain,” in an attempt to reconcile the dichotomy between fantasy and reality (Ettin 55). Alleviating strong emotions in a safe pastoral environment can also remove emotions from reality. And he explains how the pastoral represents “ordinary life, amplified,” so that the emotions experienced or displaced there may seem more extreme than their effects actually are (Ettin 31). As demonstrated in “Lycidas,” the pastoral environment can be one of familiarity or estrangement due to the strong emotions mitigated therein. As the poem begins, Milton disappears into the world of the pastoral and begins to describe the place where he and the now deceased Lycidas were “nursed on the same hill” (Milton 23). This is the normal place of the pastoral landscape, where “the gray fly blows its sultry horn” and the two boys fatten their “flocks with the cool dew of the night”; a carefree and beautiful place (Milton 28, 29). Yet, as Milton escapes from… the middle of the paper… the control he cannot find in his life, Milton creates an alternative pastoral environment in which to exercise power in his poem, “Lycidas.” As Ettin explains, it is normal for pastoral care, he uses it to contain discharge emotions. Plant life shows this throughout the poem through a picturesque desperation. However, Milton achieves a position of such great power in this place that he becomes able to question the gods and Muses. This raises the question of why the writers of most pastorals, powerful as they are with pen in hand, simply ignore their ability to place themselves above the gods. It was Milton's distraught emotional state and growing anger at his lack of closure that allowed him to ascend higher in his fantasy. He surrounded himself with the greatest mourning there could be for Lycidas, a mourning rooted in the same land he once trod on and to which he has now been returned...