The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost'

by Thomas Nathaniel Orchard

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 the glorious regent of day, begins his journey in the east, lighting up the horizon with his beams; whilst before him danced the grey dawn, and the Pleiades shedding sweet influences. There existed an ancient belief that the Earth was created in the spring, and in April the Sun is in the zodiacal constellation Taurus, in which are also situated the Pleiades; they rise a little before the orb, and precede him in his path through the heavens. The stars of this group have always been regarded with a peculiar sacredness, and their rays, mingling with those of the Sun, were believed to shed sweet influences upon the Earth. The Moon, less bright, with borrowed light, in her turn shines in the east, and, with the thousand thousand luminaries that spangle the firmament, reigns over the night.

We learn in Book III. that the archangel Uriel, who was beguiled by Satan, witnessed the Creation, and described how the heavenly bodies were brought into existence, he having perceived what we should call the gaseous elements of matter rolled into whorls and vortices which became condensed into suns and systems of worlds. This mighty angel says:—

I saw when, at his word the formless mass,
This World’s material mould, came to a heap:
Confusion heard his voice, and wild Uproar
Stood ruled, stood vast Infinitude confined;
Till at his second bidding darkness fled,
Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.
Swift to their several quarters hasted then
The cumbrous elements, Earth, Flood, Air, Fire;
And this ethereal quintessence of Heaven
Flew upward, spirited with various forms,
That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars
Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move;
Each had his place appointed, each his course;
The rest in circuit walls this Universe.—iii. 708-21.

In his sublime description of the Creation Milton has adhered with marked fidelity to the Mosaic version, as narrated in the first two chapters of Genesis, when God, by specific acts in certain stated periods of time, created the visible universe and all that it contains.

The successive acts of creation are described in words almost identical with those of Scripture, embellished and adorned with all the wealth of expression which our language is capable of affording. The several scenes presented to the imagination, and witnessed by hosts of admiring angels as each portion of the magnificent work was accomplished, are full of a grandeur and majesty worthy of the loftiest conceivable effort of Divine power and might.

The return of the Creator after the completion of His great work is described by Milton in a manner worthy of the progress of Deity through the celestial regions. The whole creation rang with jubilant delight, and the bright throng which witnessed the wonders of His might followed Him with acclamation, ascending by the glorified path of the Milky Way up to His high abode—the Heaven of Heavens—

Here finished He, and all that He had made
Viewed, and behold! all was entirely good.
So even and morn accomplished the sixth day:
Yet not till the Creator from his work
Desisting, though unwearied, up returned,
Up to the Heaven of Heavens, His high abode,
Thence to behold this new created World,
The addition of his empire, how it showed
In prospect from His throne, how good, how fair,
Answering his great idea. Up He rode,
Followed with acclamation, and the sound
Symphonious of ten thousand harps, that tuned
Angelic harmonies: The Earth, the Air
Resounded (thou remember’st, for thou heard’st)
The Heavens and all the constellations rung,
The planets in their stations listening stood,
While the bright pomp ascended jubilant.
‘Open ye everlasting gates!’ they sung;
‘Open ye Heavens! your living doors; let in
The great Creator, from his work returned
Magnificent, his six days’ work, a World;
Open, and henceforth oft; for God will deign
To visit oft the dwellings of just men,
Delighted; and with frequent intercourse
Thither will send his winged messengers
On errands of supernal grace.’ So sung
The glorious train ascending: He through Heaven,
That opened wide her blazing portals, led
To God’s eternal house direct the way—
A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,
And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear
Seen in the Galaxy, that Milky Way
Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest
Powdered with stars.—vii. 548-81.

Milton, throughout his description of the Creation, sustains with lofty eloquence his sublime conception of this latest display of almighty power; and invests with becoming majesty all the acts of the Creator, who, when He finished His great work, saw that all was entirely good.

Shortly after the creation of the new universe, Satan, having escaped from Hell, plunged into the abyss of Chaos, and, after a long and arduous journey upwards, in which he had to fight his way through the surging elements that raged around him like a tempestuous sea, he reached the upper confines of this region where less confusion prevailed, and where a glimmering dawn of light penetrated its darkness and gloom, indicating that the limit of the empire of Chaos and ancient Night had been reached by the adventurous fiend. Pursuing his way with greater ease, he leisurely beholds the sight which is opening to his eyes—a sight rendered more glorious by his long sojourn in darkness. He sees:—

Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide
In circuit, undetermined square or round,
With opal towers and battlements adorned
Of living sapphire, once his native seat,
And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
This pendent World, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the Moon.—ii. 1047-53.