glorious creature
The shading here seems deliberately suggestive of Milton's Satan. From
the very first, the Satanic legions sense that the fall from heaven has
diminished their spiritual essence, and, as in these early words of
Satan's chief follower Beelzebub, that loss is expressed in terms of
"glory."
the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallowed up in endless misery.
-- I.139-42
The most resonant identification of diminished glory with the fall of
the angels is uttered by Satan as he soliloquizes atop Mount Niphates
at the opening of Book IV. There, as he addresses the Sun, the fallen
archangel directly contrasts himself and God in terms of their manifestation
of glory.
O thou, that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Lookest from thy sole dominion like the God
Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O Sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere;
Till pride and worse ambition threw me down
Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless King.
-- IV.32-41
