served as God's messengers than as seers, de Beer states that Milton was not attempting to foretell the likely future of the church via St. Peter. De Beer continues on to note that St. Peter's appearance in "Lycidas" is likely unrelated to his position as head of the Roman Catholic Church. Neither was St. Peter ascribed any particular position within the Church of England. Instead, de Beer argues that St. Peter appears simply as an apostolic authority, through whom Milton might express his frustration with unworthy members of the English clergy. Fraser also agrees that St. Peter, indeed, serves as a vehicle for Milton's voice to enter the poem. The Church was so thrown off by the poem that they banned it for nearly twenty years after Milton's death. The conclusion Several interpretations of the ending have been proposed. Jonathan Post claims the poem ends with a sort of retrospective picture of the poet having "sung" the poem into being. According to critic Lauren Shohet, Lycidas is transcendently leaving the earth, becoming immortal, rising from the pastoral plane in which he is too involved or tangled from the objects that made him. She claims that "he is diffused into, and animates, the last location of his corpse—his experience of body-as-object… neither fully immanent (since his body is lost) nor fully transcendent (since he remains on earth)." With an ambiguous ending, the poem does not just end with a death, but instead, it just begins. The monody clearly ends with a death and an absolute end but also moves forward and comes full circle because it takes a look back at the pastoral world left behind making the ambivalence of the end a mixture of creation and destruction. Nonetheless "thy large recompense" also has a double meaning. As Paul Alpers states, Lycidias' gratitude in heaven is a payment for his loss. The word "thy" is both an object and mediator of "large recompense." Thus, the meaning also maintains the literal meaning which is that of a sacred higher being or the pagan genius. The final lines of the poem: And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills, And now was dropt into the Western bay; At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew: To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new may refer to Milton's imminent departure to Italy, and they are reminiscent of the end of Virgil's