"The Lord made anguish a reward, a home
In banishment, hell groans, hard pain, and bade
That torture house abide the joyless fall.
When with eternal night and sulphur pains,
Fullness of fire, dread cold, reek and red flames,
He knew it filled."[15]
With this description we may compare these lines from Milton:—
"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round.
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible.
…a fiery deluge, fed
With ever burning sulphur unconsumed."[16]
In Caedmon "the false Archangel and his band lay prone in liquid fire, scarce visible amid the clouds of rolling smoke." In Milton, Satan is shown lying "prone on the flood," struggling to escape "from off the tossing of these fiery waves," to a plain "void of light," except what comes from "the glimmering of these livid flames." The older poet sings with forceful simplicity:—
"Then comes, at dawn, the east wind, keen with frost."
Milton writes:—
"…the parching air Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire."[17]
When Satan rises on his wings to cross the flaming vault, the Genesis gives in one line an idea that Milton expands into two and a half:—
"Swang ðaet f=yr on tw=a f=eondes craefte."
Struck the fire asunder with fiendish craft.
"…on each hand the flames,
Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and, rolled
In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale."[18]