Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations,”
Setting aside the epithets “horizontal” and “disastrous,” which are poetically imaginative, the likening of Satan to the sun seen through a mist, or in eclipse, is a direct, parallel comparison that aids us to see Satan; and it is in such, immediate, not mediate,—not involving likeness between physical and mental qualities, but merely between physical, not between subtle, relations,—that Dante chiefly deals, showing imaginative fertility, helpful, needful to the poet, but different from, and altogether inferior to, poetic imagination. The mind attains to the height of poetic imagination when the intellect, urged by the purer sensibilities in alliance with aspiration for the perfect, exerts its imaginative power to the utmost, and, as the result of this exertion, discovers a thought or image which, from its originality, fitness, and beauty, gives to the reader a new delight. Of this, the lordliest mental exhibition, there is a sovereign example in the words wherewith Milton concludes the passage—
“and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs.”
This fills the mind with the terror he wishes his Satan to inspire; this gives its greatness to the passage.
Dante, by the distinctness of his outline, addresses himself more to the reader’s senses and perception; Milton rouses his higher imaginative capacity. In the whole “Inferno,” is there a sentence so aglow as this line and a half of “Paradise Lost”?
“And the torrid clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.”