Lucifer performs wonderful feats of valor. High on his blazing chariot, he is a conspicuous figure. His fierce team, "the lion and the dragon blue," symbolic of pride and envy, enraged by the battle-strokes rained upon their starry backs, fly forward with fearful strides—the lion, with dreadful bellows, biting and rending; while his terrible mate shoots pest-provoking poisons from his frothy tongue, and,
"... Raving, fills the air
With smoke blown from his nostrils far and wide."
On every side the infernal chief is surrounded by his enemies. They try to overpower him with mere numbers. He parries every stroke, or breaks their force upon his shield. He then waves his battle-axe aloft to fell God's glowing banner, when Michael, clad in glittering armor, "like a god amid a ring of suns," suddenly confronts him.
The Archangel sternly calls upon the rebel Prince to surrender. But Lucifer, unmoved, three times with his war-axe strives to cleave the diamond shield of Michael, wherein blazed God's most holy name. The axe rebounds and shivers into fragments; and we cannot but sympathize with the Archrebel, who is now in a bad plight indeed. The grand catastrophe to which the swift current of his wickedness has been bearing him is at last at hand, reserved with consummate art until the middle of this act.
Michael lifts his terrible right hand, and through the helmet and head of his disarmed but yet unconquered foe he smites his lightnings, cleaving unto his very eyes. The force of this blow is such that Lucifer is hurled from his chariot, which follows him downward, whirling round and round in its descent:
"Thus lion, dragon, driver, all plunge down."
In vain the fierce swarms of warring rebels attempt to stay their chief. Uriel engages Apollion, and succeeds in wresting from him the rebel banner with its morning-star. Belzebub and Belial still fight on; but their legions are all confused. The crescent has now become a disorganized mob,
"And o'er them fell destruction rolls its flood."
In vain Apollion comes back into the field, reinforced by the monsters from the firmament of Heaven, which may be supposed to typify, as Vondel says in his preface, the abuse of the forces of nature by the Devil to effect his evil designs.
Orion, shrieking until the very air grows faint, strives to crush the head of the assault, that