The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost', Thomas Nathaniel Orchard [best selling autobiographies .TXT] 📗
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He formed the Earth and all the countless shining orbs visible overhead, and the myriads more which the telescope reveals, scattered in apparently endless profusion over the circular immensity of space. It is this new universe—the Earth and Starry Heavens—that claims our chief attention, and in the delineation of Milton’s imaginative and descriptive powers it is to this latest manifestation of Divine wisdom and might that our remarks shall principally apply. After the expulsion of the rebel angels from Heaven, God sent His Son, the Messiah to create the new universe—a work of omnipotence described by Milton in a manner worthy of so magnificent a display of almighty power—
On his great expedition now appeared,
Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned
Of majesty divine: sapience and love
Immense; and all his Father in Him shone.
About his chariot numberless were poured
Cherub and Seraph, Potentates and Thrones,
And Virtues, winged Spirits, and chariots winged
From the armoury of God, where stand of old
Myriads, between two brazen mountains lodged
Against a solemn day, harnessed at hand,
Celestial equipage; and now came forth
Spontaneous, for within them Spirit lived,
Attendant on their Lord. Heaven opened wide
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound!
On golden hinges moving, to let forth
The King of Glory, in his powerful Word
And Spirit, coming to create new worlds.
On Heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore
They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
Up from the bottom turned by furious winds
And surging waves, as mountains to assault
Heaven’s highth, and with the centre mix the pole.
‘Silence, ye troubled Waves, and thou Deep, peace!’
Said then the omnific Word: ‘your discord end!’
Nor stayed; but on the wings of Cherubim
Uplifted, in paternal glory rode
Far into Chaos, and the World unborn;
For Chaos heard his voice. Him all his train
Followed in bright procession, to behold
Creation, and the wonders of his might.
Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God’s eternal store, to circumscribe
This Universe, and all created things.
One foot he centred, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure;
And said, ‘Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds;
This be thy just circumference, O World!’
Thus God the Heaven created, thus the Earth,
Matter unformed and void. Darkness profound
Covered the abyss; but on the watery calm
His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread,
And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth,
Throughout the fluid mass; but downward purged
The black, tartareous, cold, infernal dregs,
Adverse to life; then founded, then conglobed
Like things to like; the rest to several place
Disparted, and between spun out the Air;
And Earth self balanced on her centre hung.—vii. 192-242.
Milton begins his narrative of the Creation by describing the progress of the Deity on His great expedition, accompanied by hosts of angels and surrounded with all the solemn pomp and splendour of Heaven. The brilliant throng having passed through Heaven’s gates, which opened wide their portals, they beheld in front of them the dark abyss of Chaos—a tempest-tossed sea of warring elements upturned in wild confusion. At God’s instant command silence and peace reigned over the deep, and tranquil calm succeeded noisy discord. Then on the wings of Cherubim He rode far into Chaos, and with His golden compasses decreed the dimensions of the universe by circumscribing the vast vacuity of space. Into the elements which hasted to their several places, His Spirit infused vital warmth and caused the formless mass of matter to assume the figure of a sphere, and thus the Earth poised on her axis unsupported, and in darkness shrouded hung suspended in space. The placing of the golden compasses in the hands of the Creator, with which He measured out the heavens, is a noble conception on the part of Milton, and one most appropriate, since the construction of the universe is based upon the principles of geometrical science.
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,
Sprung from the Deep; and from her native east
To journey through the aëry gloom began,
Sphered in a radiant cloud; for yet the Sun
Was not; she in a cloudy tabernacle
Sojourned the while. God saw the light was good;
And light from darkness by the hemisphere
Divided; light the day, and darkness night
He named. Thus was the first day even and morn:
Nor passed uncelebrated, nor unsung
By the celestial quires, when orient light
Exhaling first from darkness they beheld;
Birthday of Heaven and Earth; with joy and shout
The hollow universal orb they filled,
And touched their golden harps, and hymning praised
God and his works: Creator Him they sung,
Both when first evening was, and when first morn.—vii. 243-60.
The appearance of Light, which sprung into existence at the fiat of the Creator, was the next great event witnessed by beholding angels—birthday of Heaven and Earth, first morning and first evening, which the celestial choirs celebrated with praise and shouts of joy. The creation of the firmament was the great work of the second day.
Amid the waters, and let it divide
The waters from the waters!’ And God made
The firmament, expanse of liquid, pure,
Transparent, elemental air, diffused
In circuit to the uttermost convex
Of this great round—partition firm and sure,
The waters underneath from those above
Dividing; for as the Earth, so He the World
Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide
Crystalline ocean, and the loud misrule
Of Chaos far removed, lest fierce extremes
Contiguous might distemper the whole frame:
And Heaven he named the Firmament. So even
And morning chorus sung the second day.—vii. 261-275.
After describing the gathering of the waters off the face of the globe into seas, causing the dry land to appear, which at the word of God became clothed with vegetation, rendering the Earth a habitable abode, Milton proceeds to describe the creation of the heavenly bodies—
High in the expanse of Heaven, to divide
The day from night; and let them be for signs,
For seasons, and for days, and circling years;
And let them be for lights, as I ordain
Their office in the firmament of Heaven,
To give light on the Earth!’ and it was so.
And God made two great Lights, great for their use
To Man, the greater to have rule by day,
The less by night, altern; and made the Stars,
And set them in the firmament of Heaven
To illuminate the Earth, and rule the day
In their vicissitude, and rule the night,
And light from darkness to divide. God saw,
Surveying his great work, that it was good:
For, of celestial bodies, first, the Sun,
A mighty sphere He framed, unlightsome first,
Though of ethereal mould; then formed the Moon
Globose, and every magnitude of Stars,
And sowed with stars the Heaven thick as a field.
Of light by far the greater part he took,
Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and placed
In the Sun’s orb, made porous to receive
And drink the liquid light; firm to retain
Her gathered beams, great palace now of Light.
Hither, as to their fountain, other stars
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light,
And hence the morning planet gilds her horns;
By tincture or reflection they augment
Their small peculiar, though, from human sight
So far remote, with diminution seen.
First in his east the glorious lamp was seen,
Regent of day, and all the horizon round
Invested with bright rays, jocund to run
His longitude through Heaven’s high road; the grey
Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danced,
Shedding sweet influence. Less bright the Moon,
But opposite in levelled west was set
His mirror, with full face borrowing her light
From him; for other light she needed none
In that aspect, and still that distance keeps
Till night; then in the east her turn she shines,
Revolved on Heaven’s great axle, and her reign
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,
With thousand thousand stars that then appeared
Spangling the hemisphere. Then first adorned
With their bright luminaries, that set and rose,
Glad evening and glad morn crowned the fourth day.—vii. 339-86.
The first creation was Light, and Milton, according to Scriptural testimony, ascribes its origin to the bidding of the Creator. ‘God said, Let there be light; and there was light!’ The Sun he describes as a mighty sphere, but at first non-luminous. There was light, but no sun. The reason usually given in explanation of this phenomenon is, that the heavenly bodies were created at the same time as the Earth, but were rendered invisible by a canopy of vapour and cloud which enveloped the newly-formed globe; and that afterwards, when it dispersed, they appeared in the firmament, shining in all their pristine splendour. Milton does not, however, adhere to this view of things, but says that light for the first three days sojourned in a cloudy shrine or tabernacle, and was afterwards transplanted in the Sun, which became a great palace of light.
He expresses himself in a somewhat similar manner in Book III., which opens with an address to Light—one of the most beautiful passages in the poem, in which he alludes to his blindness when expressing his thoughts and sentiments with regard to this ethereal medium, which conveys to us the pleasurable sensation of vision—
Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam,
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity—dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear’st thou rather, pure Ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun,
Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless Infinite.—iii. 1-12.
The Sun having become a lucent orb, Milton poetically describes how the planets repair to him as to a fountain, and in their golden urns draw light; and how the morning planet Venus gilds her horns illumined by his rays. The poet associates joyous ideas with the new-born universe. The Sun, now
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