Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/212

 Let us face the heavens and dream for a moment, forget the earth—let it drop away—just drift and dream.

How rapturously the poets have dwelt upon the music of the crystalline spheres! How sad that the volume of it was so excessive that the ear could not hear it! And great it must have been with the whirr of a globe so huge that it contained eight concentric crystalline spheres whirling around every twenty-four hours and resounding with the stars as they rolled in their orbits.

This idea of the crystal spheres of ancient astronomy was beautifully described by Milton in "Paradise Lost." Milton believed without a doubt in the theories of Copernicus who taught that the sun was a center of a system of planets which revolved about it at various distances, but he probably used this old conception of the universe because it gave him more artistic freedom in the writing of his great epic poem. Let us pursue this fascinating theme, while drifting and dreaming, and see in what way the great poet painted it in as a background for his story.

Milton pictured the boundless cosmos as divided into two parts—the "resplendent Kingdom of Heaven" which rested in brightness above, and the "turbulent darkness of Chaos" which surged in blackness below. Our "cheerful sun-illumined Universe" was thought to be contained in an opaque sphere which hung from the floor of Heaven by a golden chain. At the rebel-