All Milton's poetry is steeped in classical scholarship. He is sometimes accused of writing English like a dead language and, indeed, was just as comfortable writing in Latin as in English. Throughout his career as a poet, a prose writer and a politician, classical allusions mixed freely with Christian principles in Milton's writing and his thought. Although he was a Puritan, Milton's version of Christianity was so personal and cerebral that he was effectively a party of one, in religion as he was in politics.

In "Lycidas," Milton articulates a vision of heaven that is designed specifically for writers and other artists. What is the point, he asks, of devoting oneself to literature, only to die just as fame is within one's grasp? Although the ostensible subject of "Lycidas," Edward King, was a minor poet, Milton is clearly thinking of himself here. He receives his response from no less an authority than Phoebus Apollo, god of the sun and of the arts:

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,

Nor in the glistering foil

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies,

But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes

And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;

As he pronounces lastly on each deed,

Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed.