Note 70 — Chapter V
Reading edition
“Milton has the same idea in a kindred passage, but it is not so terse, so condensed, as Cædmon’s:—
‘Yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe.’
“In Job x. 22 we also find a similar idea:—‘A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness.’ They are all powerful, all dreadful, but Cædmon’s ‘without light, and full of flame,’ is much the strongest. It is an Inferno in a line.”—Robert Spence Watson, “Cædmon,” p. 44.