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Explanation:
".... As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,
Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile."
(Lines 338-343)
Answer: This passage is taken from Milton's ‘Paradise Lost' Book-I, the world-famous epic in English language.
In this extract, the poet is giving a description of the vast multitude of fallen angels and in this connection, he has made use of three similes. In the earlier lines, the poet likened the fallen angels to fallen leaves and weeds on the Dead Sea. In the lines under reference, they have been compared to a plague of locusts when they fly from the sea to land.
The fallen angels were numerous as the locusts which Moses had called up with the help of his magic wand to punish Egypt for her sins Egypt which are described as the land of the sinful Pharaoh.
The dark clouds of locusts came forward with irregular motion and following the direction of the eastern wind, they covered the whole of Egypt with darkness. The fallen angels suspended on outstretched wings beneath the concave roof of hell were as
As soon as Satan gave them a signal with his uplifted spear, they began to fly in numerous as the swarm of locusts that plagued Egypt. As soon as different directions with evenly poised wings and in a steady uniform movement.
Broadbent points out that locusts were an object of peculiar seventeenth-century horror, that all travellers to the East had described them with disgust and that they became material for ecclesiastical insult. That is why, Milton gives the simile a contemporary reference.
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