"Know then that, after Lucifer from Heaven "

Fell with his flaming legions through the Deep
Into his place, and the great Son returned
Victorious with his Saints, the Omnipotent
Eternal Father from his throne beheld
Their multitude, and to his Son thus spake :

'I can repair

That detriment, if such it be to lose
Self-lost, and in a moment will create
Another world; out of one man a race
Of men innumerable, there to dwell,
Not here, till, by degrees of merit raised,
They open to themselves at length the way
Up hither, under long obedience tried,

And Earth be changed to Heaven, and Heaven
to Earth.""

In

A very important point of divergence between the two poems occurs in this part of the narrative. Cadmon it is the Deity, who with celestial majesty, goes forth into Chaos to create the Universe; and in this, the poet is in perfect accord with both accounts of the Creation comprised in the first two chapters of the book Genesis:

Here the eternal Lord, Head of creation,
In the beginning shaped the Universe,

The sky upreared, and this fair spacious Earth
By His strong might was stablished evermore.

Milton, on the other hand, with his peculiar anthropomorphic ideas of the divine Paternity, represents the Father as commissioning His Son, as a celestial subject or prime minister, to accomplish His behests:

"And thou my Word, begotten Son, by thee
This I perform, speak thou, and be it done!
My overshadowing Spirit and might with thee
I send along; ride forth and bid the Deep
Within appointed bounds be heaven and earth."

We do not bring this forward from a theological standpoint, but from a purely poetical point of view. It seems to us to mar the dignity of the theme, for the Omnipotent to send forth an inferior, although delegated with sovereign power to perform the marvels of such almightiness.

It is in this connection, that there occurs that fine passage, to which we have before alluded, in which Cadmon describes primeval Chaos :

As yet, was nought beneath God's radiant Throne

But gloom as dark as in the cavern reigns,
And this wide-spread Abyss stood deep and dim

In idle uselessness, distasteful sight

To Him the source of all-creative power.
The mighty King, in mind resolved, beheld
The joyless shade and saw the lowering cloud
Lie swart and waste, like an eternal sea

Of blackest Night, beneath the effulgent glow

Of Light ineffable; till by the Word

And fiat of the King this World appeared.

The thought is the same in Milton. As the Son, accompanied by the angelic hosts, approaches the bounds of the Empyrean,

Heaven opened wide

Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound
On golden hinges moving, to let forth
The King of Glory, in his powerful Word,
And Spirit coming to create new worlds.

On Heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore
They viewed the vast immeasurable Abyss,
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild.

Having passed in celestial state,

Far into Chaos and the World unborn;

the Vicegerent of the Almighty,

Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepared

In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This Universe, and all created things.
One foot he centered, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure.

In drawing their grand, poetic panorama of Creation, both Cadmon and Milton follow so closely the well-known artistic lines of the Hebrew cosmogony,