wo_ keys, one of gold and
one of iron, is not in the Bible.

112. He shook his mitred locks. St. Peter wears the mitre as bishop.

113-131. St. Peter makes but little reference to Lycidas, and his words
add almost nothing to the elegiac character of the poem. His speech is
one of stern and bitter satire. The second period of Milton's life, which
is to be given up to intense and uncompromising partisanship in religion
and politics, foreshadows itself in these lines.

114. Enow is here used in its proper plural sense. See note on Comus 780.

115. climb into the fold. See John X 1. The metaphor of sheep and
herdsmen is continued throughout the speech.

119. Blind mouths! As the relative pronoun beginning the next clause
refers to this exclamation, mouths must be taken as a bold metaphor
meaning men who are all mouth, or are supremely greedy and selfish.
Moreover, they are blind.

122. What recks it them? See note on Comus 404. They are sped: they have
succeeded in their purpose. See Antony and Cleopatra II 3 35. Note also
the phrase of greeting, _bid God speed_, as in 2 John I 10, 11, King
James version.

123. their lean and flashy songs: their sermons.

Evidently Milton can cull words of extreme disparagement and vilification
as well as words of unapproachable poetic beauty.

125-127. The congregations are not edified. The miserable preaching they
listen to fails to keep them sound in doctrine. They grow lax in their
faith, and heretical opinions become fashionable.

128. the grim wolf with privy paw is undoubtedly the Roman church.

130-131. These lines evidently denounce some terrible retribution that is
sure ere long to overtake the corrupt clergy described in the preceding
passage. The two-handed engine at the door, that stands ready to smite
once and smite no more, has never been definitely explained. We naturally
think of the headsman's axe, which, however, does not become applicable
till the execution of Archbishop Laud, an event not to take place till
eight years after the composition of the poem. It has been suggested that
Milton had in mind the two houses of Parliament, or the Parliament and
the Army, as the agency through which reform was to be effected. We must
remember that Milton in 1637 could not foresee the Civil War. He may have
meant to combine certain scriptural expressions into a mysteriously
suggestive and oracular prediction, without having in view any single and
definite possibility.