Amongst innumerable stars, that shone
Stars distant, but nigh hand seemed other worlds.—iii. 564-65.
her reign
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,
With thousand thousand stars, that then appeared
Spangling the hemisphere.—vii. 381-84.
Milton describes the number of the fallen angels as
an host
Innumerable as the stars of night.—v. 744-45,
and the attention of Satan is directed by the archangel Uriel to the multitude of stars formed from the chaotic elements of matter:
Numberless as thou seest, and how they move;
Each had his place appointed, each his course;
The rest in circuit walls this universe.—iii. 719-21.
Though Milton was doubtless familiar with the leading orbs of the firmament and knew their names, and the constellations in which they are situated, yet he makes no direct allusion to any of them in his poem. Neither Arcturus, which is mentioned in the Book of Job, nor Sirius, which attracted the attention of Homer, who compared the brightness of Achilles’ armour to the dazzling brilliancy of the dog-star, finds a place in ‘Paradise Lost.’ And yet the superior magnitude and brilliancy of some stars when compared with those of others did not escape Milton’s observation when, in describing the lofty eminence of Satan in heaven, prior to his fall, he represents him as
brighter once amidst the host
Of angels than that star the stars among.—vii. 132-33.
There is but one star to which Milton makes individual allusion, and, though not of any conspicuous brilliancy, yet it is one of much importance to astronomers—
the fleecy star that bears
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas
Beyond the horizon.—iii. 558-60.