“Some Comet or unusual prodigy.”
Spenser in his “Faerie Queene” sings of a woman’s hair loosely dispersed in the wind:
“All as a blazing starre doth farre outcast
His heavy beames, and flaming lockes dispredd,
At sight whereof the people stand aghast;
But the sage Wizzard telles, as he has redd,
That it importunes death and doleful drearyhedd.”
John Milton, besides likening Satan to a Comet, as before quoted, also showed that he shared in the belief that the flaming swords mentioned in Holy Writ were Comets:
“High in front advanced
The brandish’d sword of God before them blazed