"What heaven's Lord had powerfulest to send Against us from about his throne, and judged, Sufficient to subdue us to his will, But proves not so: then fallible, it seems. Of future we may deem him, though till now Omniscient thought."[206] He also talks like a drill sergeant. "Vanguard, to right and left the front unfold." He makes quips as clumsy as those of Harrison, the former butcher turned officer. What a heaven! It is enough to disgust a man with Paradise; anyone would rather enter Charles I's troop of lackeys, or Cromwell's Ironsides. We have orders of the day, a hierarchy, exact submission, extra-duties, disputes, regulated ceremonials, prostrations, etiquette, furbished arms, arsenals, depots of chariots and ammunition. Was it worth while leaving earth to find in heaven carriage-works, buildings, artillery, a manual of tactics, the art of salutations, and the Almanach de Gotha? Are these the things which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart to conceive"? What a gap between this monarchical frippery[207] and the visions of Dante, the souls floating like stars amid the harmonies, the mingled splendors, the mystic roses radiating and vanishing in the azure, the impalpable world in which all the laws of earthly life are dissolved, the unfathomable abyss traversed by fleeting visions, like golden bees gliding in the rays of the deep central sun! Is it not a sign of extinguished imagination, of the inroad of prose, of the birth of practical genius, replacing metaphysics by morality? What a fall! To measure it, read a true Christian poem, the Apocalypse. I copy half a dozen verses; think what it has become in the hands of the imitator: "And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; "And in the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. "His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; "And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. "And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. "And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead."[208] When Milton was arranging his celestial show, he did not fall as dead.