"Ah, bliss to lie beside the jasper urn
Of founts, and through the open arabesque
To watch Canopus burn!"
Let us face the heavens and dream for a moment, forget the earth—let it drop away—just drift and dream.
"Ring out, ye crystal spheres!
Once bless our human ears
(If ye have power to charm our senses so;)
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time,
(And let the base of Heaven's deep organ blow;)
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full concert with angelic symphony."
—Milton.
How rapturously the poets have dwelt upon the music of the crystalline spheres! How sad that the volume of it was so excessive that the ear could not hear it! And great it must have been with the whirr of a globe so huge that it contained eight concentric crystalline spheres whirling around every twenty-four hours and resounding with the stars as they rolled in their orbits.
This idea of the crystal spheres of ancient astronomy was beautifully described by Milton in "Paradise Lost." Milton believed without a doubt in the theories of Copernicus who taught that the sun was a center of a system of planets which revolved about it at various distances, but he probably used this old conception of the universe because it gave him more artistic freedom in the writing of his great epic poem. Let us pursue this fascinating theme, while drifting and dreaming, and see in what way the great poet painted it in as a background for his story.
Milton pictured the boundless cosmos as divided into two parts—the "resplendent Kingdom of Heaven" which rested in brightness above, and the "turbulent darkness of Chaos" which surged in blackness below. Our "cheerful sun-illumined Universe" was thought to be contained in an opaque sphere which hung from the floor of Heaven by a golden chain. At the rebellion of Satan and his rebel followers, God hurled them through the floor of Heaven and down through the darkness of immeasurable space to a place in Chaos hollowed out to receive them. This place contained such dire discomforts that Satan in his wrath swore revenge.
Satan had heard that in order to hollow out this awful place in Chaos, the ether, which was believed to fill all space, flew upward
"spirited with various forms,
That rowl'd orbicular, and turned to starrs."
the stars walling-in a Universe which was to contain a dwelling place for a new race which might eventually take the place of the rebels cast from Heaven. The stars were then surrounded by a translucent shell which protected this new creation from the cold and tempests of outer space.