Milton describes the hoards of fallen angels as scattered, fallen leaves: “thick as Autumnal leaves.” What does this mean? What’s the point of comparison? Is it merely: There are lots of fallen angels, just as there are lots of fallen leaves in your yard?

The repetition of “fallen” in the last sentence suggests otherwise. Fallen leaves aren’t just numerous and thick, but evoke a story - a story of life leading to death, of height that leads to a fall, of scattering by and to the winds. Does Milton want us to get this from his simile?

Hollander suggests that by the time the simile has passed from Milton through Hardy and Allen Tate and Wallace Stevens, it means: “Even as leaves turn color and die, and the Sybil’s scattered leaves are reconstituted metaphorically in all our own writings - whoever we are, whatever we write - even as men fall like leaves, and become mulch for new generations, even as the leaves of the book of life turn, so does the very image of fallen leaves present itself for revision.”