Their winter was the clear-skied sun, shrinking / To a diamond point of celestial fire./ Winter was the iron-dark night, descended/ In silence, then unleash'd with voiceless sounds / Of midnight storms, unseen. And in the day, /White-encircl'd, no distance judged, he saw/ The fields of ice that crested heavenward/ And fell as the still wake of frozen seas./ In starless night, satin frost cover'd her,/ Block'd all light and hid the shadow'd surface/ Of ground beneath a mantle canopy/ Of iron, bound in white light and BLACK ICE. - Milton, Paradise Lost