Lycidas and Adonais

"Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,	165
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore	170
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky"                                     -Lycidas, Milton In Adonais, Shelley borrows heavily from an earlier work, Lycidas, and elegy by John Milton.  Milton, solicited by his university to eulogize a former classmate who drowned in a bizarre accident off the coast of Wales, was very uncomfortable with the idea.  Though he executes the pastoral elegy to perfection, it is evident that he is struggling to reconcile his abilities as a poet (I come to pluck your [laurel] berries harsh and crude/ with forced fingers rude) and this somber task. On the other hand, Shelley seems to be quite the different case; his writing of the poem is voluntary, and also elevates the subject to a quasi-divine status.  In Adonais, Shelley's confidence is apparent. Ultimately, the difference in the postures of their authors results in two vastly divergent conclusions.  Milton finds hope in the immortality borne of a faith in God, while Shelley does so in the immortality of the poet.