Where now the South sea heaves its waste of tide,
Rose on swift wheels the Moon’s refulgent car,
Circling the solar orb, a sister star,
Dimpled with vales, with shining hills emboss’d,
And roll’d round earth her airless realms of frost.”
No man will say in this case,—
Parturiunt montes nascetur ridiculus mus.
The reaction, at the moment of explosion, of that mass of matter which now composes our moon, is the cause of the obliquity of the polar axis to the poles of the ecliptic, according to Dr Darwin; though Milton says,
“—————Angels turn’d askance
The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more: