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)