Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/166

160 Earth, and the garden of God, with cedars crowded Above all hills. As when by night the glass Of Galileo, less assured, observes Imagined lands and regions in the moon; Or pilot from amidst the Cyclades Delos or Samos first appearing kens, A cloudy spot. Down thither prone in flight He speeds, and, through the vast ethereal sky, Sails between worlds and worlds with steady wing, Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan Winnows the buxom air; till, within soar Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he seems A phœnix, gazed by all, as that sole bird, When, to enshrine his reliques in the Sun's Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies.
 * At once on the eastern cliff of Paradise

He lights, and to his proper shape returns, A Seraph winged. Six wings he wore, to shade His lineaments divine; the pair that clad Each shoulder broad came mantling o'er his breast With regal ornament; the middle pair Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round Skirted his loins and thighs, with downy gold And colors dipped in heaven; the third his feet Shadowed from either heel, with feathered mail, Sky-tinctured grain. Like Maia's son he stood,