The purer air of heaven. Keen rush’d the light
In quivering splendour from the writhen flash:
Strong though they were, intolerable smote
Their orbs of sight, and with bedimming glare
Scorch’d up their blasted vision. [209]Through the void
Of Erebus, the preternatural flame
Spread, mingling fire with darkness. But to see
With human eye and hear with ear of man
Had been, as on a time [210]the heaven and earth
Met hurtling in mid-air: as nether earth