Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love
Yes, my apologies, I realize I didn't really state the primary meaning of the lines in my comments. Just as you say, the meaning of the lines is that Milton imagines some future poet praising him in a poem just as he is now praising Lycidas, and that's what I was referring to when I said they describe a continuance of life and of poetry--one poet (the future muse) continuing where another has left off by eulogizing that previous poet (Milton) . I was taking the meaning for granted and examining the way in which he's getting that meaning across because I've always found his diction here very rich. The "turn" make it clear that he's talking about poetic composition that will immortalize him one day, and I love the way his choice of the word "passes" not only describes a poet in the future, but describes him doing something in the present tense with an implication of this future poet one day himself becoming past. It's a really wonderfully compact way of putting across a whole cycle of events repeating themselves throughout time as each succeeding poet pays homage to the last and hopes to be immortalized himself.
