One of the great sources of poetical delight is description, or the
power of presenting pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences
instead of images, and shows not what may be supposed to have been
seen, but what thoughts the sight might have suggested. When Virgil
describes the stone which Turnus lifted against AEneas, he fixes the
attention on its bulk and weight:


Saxum circumspicit ingens,
Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat
Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.


Cowley says of the stone with which Cain slew his brother,


I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant
At once his murther and his monument.


Of the sword taken from Goliath, he says,


A sword so great, that it was only fit
To cut off his great head that came with it.


Other poets describe Death by some of its common appearances.
Cowley says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps real or
fabulous,