by John Milton
Created in his image, there to dwell
And worship him, and in reward to rule628
Over his works628, on earth, in sea, or air,
And multiply a race of worshippers
Holy and just: thrice happy if they know631
Their happiness631, and persevere632 upright.’
“So sung they, and the empyrean rung,
With hallelujahs: thus was Sabbath kept.
And thy request think now fulfilled, that asked
How first this world and face of things636 began,
And what before thy memory was done
From the beginning, that posterity
Informed by thee might know; if else thou seek’st
Aught, not surpassing human measure, say.”
1. Descend from Heav’n: evoking Horace’s descende caelo … Calliope (Odes 4.1.2); Urania: the Muse of astronomy in Roman times, but transformed into the Muse of Christian poetry by du Bartas in La Muse Chrestiene (1574).
3. above th’ Olympian hill: Cp. 1.15.
4. Pegasean wing: The winged horse Pegasus ascended to the heavens of Greek mythology, but Milton has risen incomparably higher, to the Heaven of the Christian God.
5. The meaning, not the name: Urania means “heavenly one” in Latin, but Milton calls upon a power found in the Christian Heaven.
9. Wisdom: Wisdom was born “before the hills,” before all Creation, in Prov. 8.24–31. Milton identified her as a personification of the Father’s wisdom (CD 1.7 in MLM 1199). converse: live in company with (Lat. conversari).
13. Heav’n of Heav’ns: the supreme Heaven (an English version of the Hebrew superlative).
15. Thy temp’ring: “made suitable by thee for an earthly guest.”
17–20. Milton defines his hapless condition without the Muse’s aid by reference to the fate of Bellerophon, who tried unsuccessfully to ride Pegasus (see l. 4) to heaven and fell upon the Aleian field (land of wandering), where he died erroneous (i.e., in a state of distraction). According to some, his fall blinded him (Conti, Mythologiae 9.4).
18. clime: region.
21–22. Save for episodes in Books 10 and 11, the remaining action of the poem takes place on Earth.
22. visible diurnal sphere: the visible universe, which appears to rotate around the Earth on a daily basis.
23. rapt: transported; pole: the highest spot in the universe, at which it is chained to Heaven (2.1051–52). Milton went above the pole when representing the divine council at the opening of Book 3.
25. hoarse: In RCG, Milton ruefully noted that pamphlets were “a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes” (MLM. 843). mute: probably alludes to the silencing of many Puritan authors during the Restoration. Milton’s point is that his poem has suffered neither of the common fates (becoming hoarse or mute) of Puritan pamphleteers. evil days: After the restoration of the English monarchy in May 1660, an order was issued for Milton’s arrest. He was in fact arrested after hiding out for some weeks, and released in December. During this time some of his books were burned.
26. evil tongues: Among the many authors who reviled Milton during the Restoration were Roger L’Estrange, George Starkey, David Lloyd, Thomas Ford, Robert South, and Samuel Parker.
27. darkness: blindness, from which Milton had suffered since 1652.
28–30. while thou … east: Biographers report that Milton composed either at night or early in the morning (Darbishire 33, 291). Cp. 3.29–32; 9.21–24.
32. barbarous dissonance: The phrase also appears in Masque (l. 550).
33–37. the race … voice: The poet Orpheus was torn to pieces by the Maenads, female followers of Bacchus, after he rejected the love of women. His mother, the epic Muse Calliope, could not save him, as Milton also stresses in Lyc 58–63. But Urania, a higher Muse, can protect her inspired poet.
46. touch: “Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die” (Gen. 3.3); cp. 9.651.
47. sole command: The singularity of the commandment has already been stressed (1.32; 4.421, 423–24, 428).
50. wand’ring: innocently curious wandering at this point, but the word does have the fallen sense of “going astray, losing one’s moral bearings,” as perhaps in line 20. consorted: espoused.
52. admiration: wonder; muse: meditation.
57. redounded: recoiled.
59. repealed: recalled.
63. conspicuous: visible.
72. Divine interpreter: “Mercury, who is the president of language, is called deorum hominumque interpres” (Jonson, Discoveries, in Herford et al. 8:621). Raphael is the Christian Mercury. See also 3.656–57.
79. end: purpose.
83. seemed: seemed good.
85. avail us known: prove valuable to us when known.
88. yields or fills: Air “yields space to all bodies, and … fills up the deserted space [when the bodies move]” (Richardson).
94. Absolved: finished; unforbid: unforbidden.
97. magnify: glorify. “Remember that thou magnify his work, which men behold” (Job 36.24).
98. yet wants: still has to.
99. suspense: attentive, hanging.
100. he hears: The sun or great light of day in line 98 is here personified.
103. unapparent deep: no longer perceptible Chaos.
106. will watch: will stay awake. Sleep (personified) is the subject of this verb.
107. his: Sleep’s.
116. infer: render.
120. Of knowledge within bounds: On this theme, cp. 8.173–97.
121. inventions: speculations; hope: hope for.
124. in Earth or Heaven: The passage has apparently been calling attention to the bounds on human knowledge, but now we learn that the bounds in question limit angelic knowledge as well.
132. So call him: In classical Latin, Lucifer (from Gk. for “light-bringer”) refers to Venus, the morning star. The Christian Fathers called Satan by the name of Lucifer, perhaps in reference to his original brightness. In Milton’s four drafts for a tragedy on the fall of man in the CMS, the character is referred to as Lucifer, not Satan. Cp. 5.760, 10.425.
136. saints: angels.
143. fraud: The word has its usual meaning of dishonesty and deception, but also the sense of Latin fraus (crime, injury). Satan not only drew his followers into deceit; he ruined them.
144. their place knows here no more: a scriptural idiom (Ps. 101.16, Job 7.10); cp. 11.50–57.
145. the greater part: Cp. 2.692n.
146. station: post, duty.
150–55. Empson concludes that God creates us “to spite the devils.” The passage says as much; but God also stresses that the Creation was not necessitated by the defection of the rebel angels.
152. fondly: foolishly.
156. men innumerable: A finite number of angels were created; they do not reproduce. The breeding race of men, by contrast, is innumerable (unnumbered). See Augustine, City of God 22.1. Thomas Browne wrote of “the fertility of Adam, and the magic of that sperm that hath dilated into so many millions” (Religio Medici 1.48).
162. inhabit lax: “dwell at ease” (having vanquished the rebels) and “dwell at large” (having more of Heaven to yourselves).
165. The Son creates the world, but using the Spirit and might of the Father. This combination of agency and service is typical of Milton’s Arian Christology (see 3.169–72, 384–96; 6.680–83).
168–71. Boundless … goodness: The passage is highly compressed. The deep (uncreated Chaos) will not be any less boundless because of Creation. It is infinite because filled by an infinite God, who can nonetheless, and also with no loss of infinity, retire from it.
171. free: “In God a certain immutable internal necessity to do good, independent of all outside influence, can be consistent with absolute freedom of action” (CD 1.3 in MLM 1155). It is crucial to Milton that God be free to put forth his goodness in Creation, or not.
172. necessity and chance: a philosophical binary that the Christian God was often
said to transcend (Augustine, City of God 5.1.8–10, on necessity; Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 4.1–2, on chance). In Milton, Chance rules only embryonic atoms (2.907), and necessity is “the tyrant’s plea” (4.394).
173. what I will is fate: “Fate or fatum is only what is fatum, spoken, by some almighty power” (CD 1.2 in MLM 1146). Paradoxes would seem to be on the horizon: if God wills our will to be free, then freedom is fate. But Milton tried to keep divine and human freedom at a distance from such dialectical cleverness. Theologically, politically, and aesthetically, liberty was his most cherished concept.
175. the filial Godhead: the Son.
176. Immediate are the acts of God: Augustine maintained that the six days of Creation in Genesis symbolize one instantaneous act (De Genesi 1.1–3).
178. process of speech: the successive acts that constitute speech.
179. earthly notion: human understanding.
180–83. The passage is based on Job 38.7 and Luke 2.14.
188. Good out of evil: remembering 1.162–63 and anticipating 7.613–16 and 12.469–78.
194. Girt: armed.
197. poured: crowded together; not arranged in an orderly fashion.
200. armory of God: “The Lord hath opened his armory” (Jer. 50.25). See 6.321.
201. Four chariots are seen between two mountains in Zech. 6.1.
202. Against: in readiness for.
203–5. now … Lord: See the animated chariot of 6.845–50.
205. opened wide: Cp. the self-opening gate of 5.254–55, derived from Ps. 24.7.
206. ever-during: everlasting.
212. Outrageous: immense, unrestrained; wasteful: desolate.
217. omnific: all-creating. We have replaced the colon at the end of this line in 1667 with a period and sacrificed an effect: as the colon would have suggested, omnific Word is the subject of the next syntactical unit’s verbs (stayed, uplifted, rode).
224. fervid: glowing (from motion).
225. compasses: Wisdom declares in Prov. 8:27, “I was there: then he set a compass upon the face of the depth.” Cp. Dante, Par. 19.40–42.
226. circumscribe: mark out the limits of.
231. just: exact.
233. Matter unformed and void: “The earth was without form, and void” (Gen. 1.2).
235. brooding wings: See 1.20–22.
236. vital virtue: the stuff of life.
238. tartareous: hellish.
239. founded: usually glossed as “laid the foundation,” but Leonard’s “attached” fits the context perfectly. The word has biblical precedent (Ps. 89.11; Prov. 3.19). conglobed: gathered into separate spheres.
241. Disparted: separated in different directions.
242. self-balanced: Cp. Nat Ode 117–24; her center: See 4.1000–1001; 5.578–79.
243–52. Milton’s version of Gen. 1.3–5.
244. Since the sun and other heavenly bodies are not created until the fourth day, commentators had somehow to distinguish ordinary celestial light from the light of Gen. 1.3. Milton identifies the primal light with ether, a fifth element (quintessence) thought to be ubiquitous above the sphere of the moon.
248. tabernacle: dwelling. “He set a tabernacle for the sun” (Ps. 19.4).
252. ev’n and morn: The Hebrew day was measured from evening to evening, though the meaning of evening was disputed. According to Fowler, “Milton clearly followed Jerome in reckoning from sunset” (Introduction, 30). Ev’n here must therefore mean “sunset.”
254. orient: bright, eastern.
255. Exhaling: rising as a vapor. The earth was thought to emit vaporous clouds (exhalations) that rose toward the heavens and often combusted. Milton implicitly compares the separation of light from darkness to this phenomenon.
261–74. Milton’s version of Gen. 1.6–8. The waters above the firmament are identified with the space between the earth and the crystalline sphere at the rim of the universe; the lower waters are the earth’s oceans.
264. expanse: a correct translation of the Hebrew word rendered “firmament” in the AV.
267. this great round: the universe.
269. the world: the universe.
273. distemper the whole frame: disturb the order of the elements, making the universe too hot or too cold.
277. embryon immature involved: wrapped (by waters) in an immature embryonic state.
281. great mother: Earth, who is both the mother and her child.
282. genial: fertilizing.
288. tumid: swollen.
291. precipitance: flowing, falling.
292. conglobing: assembling into spheres.
293. crystal wall: See the description of the parting of the Red Sea at 12.196–97. ridge direct: move forward like waves.
299. with torrent rapture: with torrential force, with rapturous obedience.
302. serpent error wand’ring: a crucial text for critics who argue for the presence of unfallen and fallen languages in the poem, since all three words have a sinful signification, but also an “innocent” one: serpent could mean “serpentine”; error mean “winding course”; and wand’ring mean “moving now this way, now that way.” See Ricks 1963, 110; Fish 1967, 130–41.
308. congregated waters: For Gen. 1.10 the Vulgate reads congregationesque aquarum.
309–33. Milton’s version of Gen. 1.11–13.
313–19. the bare earth … sweet: Here, as throughout the account of Creation, Milton describes the shaping activity of logoi spermatikoi (seminal seeds) embedded in matter. Augustine had adapted from Stoic cosmology the notion of these seeds or rationes seminales informed with the Creator’s ideas of all things (De Trinitate 3.8.3). The Son speaks, the logoi spermatikoi obediently unfold. For more on this tradition, see Curry 1937, 29–49.
321. swelling: Both 1667 and 1674 read “smelling.”
322. Embattled: See the cornlike spears of 4.980–82; add: moreover.
323. hair: leaves and branches; implicit: entangled.
325. gemmed: budded (from Lat. gemmare).
332. man to till the ground: See Gen. 2.5.
338. recorded: bore witness to.
339–86. Milton’s version of Gen. 1.14–19.
348. altern: by turns.
351. vicissitude: alternation.
356. of ethereal mold: made from quintessential matter (see 244n).
357. every magnitude of stars: stars of every degree of brightness.
366. morning planet: Venus or Lucifer; her: So 1667; 1674 has “his.” Venus would fit her, Lucifier his, but morning planet could be either, and there is no strong reason for preferring one reading to the other.
367. tincture or reflection: absorbing or reflecting the sun’s light.
368. Their small peculiar: their own small light.
372. Invested: clothed, arrayed; jocund to run: See Ps. 19.4–5.
373. longitude: course from east to west.
374–75. Pleiades … influence: Job 38.31: “Canst thou bind the sweet influences to the Pleiades?”
376. leveled west: due west (directly opposite).
377. His mirror: in the sense that the moon reflects the sun’s light.
379. In that aspect: in that position (when the moon is full).
381. axle: axis.
382. dividual: divided.
387–448. Milton’s version of Gen. 1.20–23.
388. Reptile: creeping things, including fish.
390. Displayed: spread out.
393. by their kinds: according to their species.
403. Bank the mid sea: form living banks or shelves.
409. smooth: smooth or calm water.
410. bended: arching themselves.
412. leviathan: the whale; an animal as opposed to the satanic emblem of 1.200–208.
415–16. gills … trunk: perhaps a residue of the medieval correspondence between whales and elephants, though words like gills and trunk had a considerable range of reference (see Edwards 110–13).
419. kindly: natural
.
420. callow: unfeathered; fledge: fledged.
421. summed their pens: gained their full complement of feathers.
422. clang: harsh cry; despised: looked down upon.
422–23. under a cloud/In prospect: There was such a mass of birds that the ground seemed to be under a cloud.
425. loosely: singly.
427. Intelligent: cognizant. There are no seasons until the celestial adjustments of 10.651–707. No adjustments will have to be made in the birds themselves. They are hardwired from day one with the inclination to migrate.
429–30. Flying … flight: Some migrating birds were supposed to take turns resting on one another (Svendsen 1969, 158).
432. Floats: undulates.
434. Solaced: cheered; painted: imitated from Vergil, Aen. 4.525.
439. mantling: forming a mantle (by raising their wings).
440. Her state: her stature or rank.
441. dank: pool; pennons: pinions; tower: rise into.
442. mid-aerial sky: the midair, a cold region where clouds are found.
444. th’ other: the other cock (i.e., the peacock).
446. eyes: the eye-shaped configurations on the plumage of peacocks.
450–98. Milton’s version of Gen. 1.24–25.
451. soul: Both early editions read “foul” (fowl), which have already been created.
454. teemed: brought forth.
457. wons: dwells.
461. rare: here and there.
464. lion: the first land animal to be named, which seems to defer to the old bestiaries that accounted him “king of beasts.” Milton’s lion is rampant (rearing up), as in heraldry, but calved and brinded associate the lion with humbler beasts (Edwards 126).
471. Behemoth: the elephant.
474. river horse: translates “hippopotamus”; scaly crocodile: In the tradition of European natural history, the crocodile was the epitome of strangeness; see Shakespeare, ANT 2.7.41–51. It was famous for its false tears, its cruelty, its odd relationship to a bird that supposedly gnawed its entrails. In this respect, Milton’s scaly crocodile, “stripped of lore and lessons,” provides another example of his interest in “freeing animals from their symbolic places” (Edwards 120, 127).
476. worm: a designation for serpents as well as insects (which creep the ground).
482. Minims: smallest creatures.
