Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/237

Rh He took the golden compasses, prepared In God's eternal store, to circumscribe This Universe, and all created things. One foot he centered, and the other turned Round through the vast profundity obscure, And said:—'Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds, This be thy just circumference, O World!'
 * "Thus God the heaven created, thus the earth,

Matter unformed and void. Darkness profound Covered the Abyss; but on the watery calm His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread, And vital virtue infused and vital warmth, Throughout the fluid mass, but downward purged The black, tartareous, cold, infernal, dregs Adverse to life: then founded, then conglobed, Like things to like, the rest to several place Disparted, and between spun out the air, And Earth, self-balanced, on her centre hung.
 * Let there be light!' said God, and forthwith light,

Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure, Sprung from the Deep, and from her native east To journey through the aery gloom began. Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun Was not; she in a cloudy tarbernacle Sojourned the while. God saw the light was good; And light from darkness by the hemisphere Divided. Light the Day, and darkness Night