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, embellis