asses by these pl

Image and glunges in medios pa

with his confec

ng like thunders

er al from the Emp

As part of the nar77

on in Heaven an hosts, to be related

in the Epic,* when */ tams request, a circumaute An

te vas in the Empyrean, dry a a a summary ruin. To the

lace we shall refer in our Kegel E

And sent them wailing forth

Down the dark, steep, unutterable path
That leads to Hell.

To deepest infamy, their beauteous forms

By sin defaced, they urged their darksome way
To darker punishment. In torments dire
Accursed they dwelt. No longer did they raise
The loud derisive laugh; for ceaseless woe,
Deep racking pain, grief unassuagable
And hydra-headed torture, all around,

Enthroned in blackest darkness, mocked their cries;
Just retribution for the unholy war

They thought to wage against Almighty God.

In Paradise Lost, Milton passes by these preliminary events in his Prologue, and plunges in medias res, depicting his hero, together with his confederates, as "lying in the burning lake thunderstruck and astonished" after their fall from the Empyrean; and he reserves all of this part of the narrative, viz., the incipiency of the rebellion in Heaven and the expulsion of the rebel hosts, to be related in full by Raphael, later on in the Epic,* when the Archangel gives at Adam's request, a circumstantial description of the wars in the Empyrean, ending in Satan's defeat and summary ruin. To this part of Milton's narrative we shall refer in our comparison of corresponding passages when we come to Cadmon's fuller narrative in what we have styled the third section.

And now, that broad domain of Heaven's fair realm, The fairest and most powerful to move

* Vide Book V, 1. 561, etc.

Rebellious lust, in lonely grandeur stood;
Its palaces so richly wrought and fair,
Conceived and fashioned by rebellious skill,
Stood tenantless. Then thought the mighty God
How, once again, those bright Angelic seats
And beauteous realms, created by His will,
He might repeople with a better race
And nobler, than the vaunting myrmidons
Who lightly forfeited their heaven-born right.
Then Holy God resolved, beneath the vast,
Celestial firmament (tho' still within

His boundless realms), to form a beauteous World
With overarching skies and waters wide

And earthly creatures filled, in place of those

Whom headlong He had hurled from His abode.

So sings Cædmon, in the opening theme of his poem, the creation of the Starry Universe and of Man.

In Paradise Lost, Adam beseeches Raphael, if it be permissible, to relate,

How first began this Heaven which we behold
Distant so high, with moving fires adorned
Innumerable; and this which yields or fills
All space, the ambient Air, wide interfused,
Embracing round this florid Earth; what cause
Moved the Creator, in his holy rest
Through all eternity, so late to build
In Chaos;

to which the "affable Archangel" replies: