Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/178

172 Of warring Spirits? how, without remorse, The ruin of so many glorious once, And perfect while they stood? how last unfold The secrets of another world, perhaps Not lawful to reveal? Yet for thy good This is dispensed; and what surmounts the reach Of human sense I shall declineate so, By likening spiritual to corporal forms, As may express them best. Though what if Earth Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought!
 * "As yet this World was not, and Chaos wild

Reigned where these heavens now roll, where earth now rests Upon her centre poised; when on a day— For time, though in eternity, applied To motion, measures all things durable By present, past, and future—on such day As Heaven's great year brings forth, the empyreal host Of Angels, by imperial summons called, Innumerable before the Almighty's throne Forthwith from all the ends of Heaven appeared, Under their hierarchs in orders bright. Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced, Standards and gonfalons, 'twixt van and real,