Milton's friend and contemporary, the poet Andrew Marvell, was struck by the sheer audacity and boldness of Paradise Lost:

These commendatory lines from Marvell's “On Mr. Milton's Paradise Lost” (1674) capture well the extraordinary cosmic scope of Milton's sublime poem and the ambition of its blind, prophetic author. This “Mighty Poet” would (as Marvell observes later) soar “above human flight” as he dares to give new imaginative expression to divine truth – even at the risk of sacrificing it to fable – in an epic poem fully rivalling its precursors, as well as the very Bible itself. A sensitive and astute reader of Milton's Paradise Lost, Marvell recognized that it was a “landmark” of sorts, for no other poem in Milton's age had attempted to do so much by lifting, in the words of the archangel Raphael, “Human imagination to such highth / Of Godlike Power” (PL 6.300–1). The “vast Design” of Paradise Lost combined epic form and sacred themes to create a poetic composition entirely new.