Bible stories But Cowley added scenes that felt strange He described hell and used speech from Lucifer The poet says Here Lucifer the mighty Captive reigns Proud 'midst his Woes and Tyrant in his Chains These parts looked more like old myths They did not match the main theme Such ideas made the poem dull and heavy These long talks and speeches made readers tired The joy of reading got lost in useless detail Lack of True Epic Parts A true epic needs a great plan strong action and full characters But Davideis lacks these parts It has no big battles or deep emotion Johnson said it used tricks from older epics like flashbacks and visions But even with these tools Cowley could not move forward He had no new way to fill the next eight books His methods became weak That may be why he left the work unfinished In fine Johnson was right in his judgment Davideis missed the key parts of an epic It had good ideas but poor results The story was short the plan was weak and the joy was missing Though Cowley was wise and skilled this poem failed as an epic