Whose unconsum’d consumption preys upon
The never-dying life of a long death.
In this sad house of slow destruction
(His shop of flames) he fries himself, beneath
A mass of woes; his teeth for torment gnash,
While his steel sides sound with his tail’s strong lash.’
This portrait of monkish superstition does not equal the grandeur of Milton’s description.
——‘His form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appear’d
Less than archangel ruin’d and the excess