“These late eclipses in the Sun and Moon portend no good to us.”
With this, Edmund, Gloster’s son, apparently agrees, for he exclaims:—
“These eclipses do portend these divisions.”
—Act i. sc. 2.
In Othello, the Moor of Venice himself, in a moment of excitement, says:—
“O, insupportable! O, heavy hour!
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of Sun and Moon, and that the affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration.”
—Act v. sc. 2.
In Anthony and Cleopatra we find Anthony expressing what our forefathers so often thought in connection with astronomical matters:—
“Alack, our terrine Moon is now eclipsed;
And it portends alone
The fall of Anthony!”
—Act iii. sc. 11.
Milton has an allusion to an eclipse of the Sun which possesses a two-fold interest—intrinsic and extrinsic. The former feature will be self-evident when the passage is read. The poet, in describing[166] the faded splendour of the fallen archangel, compares him to the Sun seen under circumstances which have temporarily deprived it of its normal brilliancy and glory:—
“As when the Sun new-risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the Moon
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs.”