All sounds on fret by string or golden wire, Temper'd soft tunings, intermix'd with voice Choral or unison: of incense clouds,
Fuming from golden censers, hid the mount. Creation and the six days' acts they sung: 'Great are thy works, Jehovah! infinite
Thy power! what thought can measure thee, or tongue
Relate thee? Greater now in thy return Than from the giant angels: thee that day Thy thunders magnified; but to create Is greater than, created, to destroy.
Who can impair thee, Mighty King, or bound Thy empire? Easily the proud attempt Of spirits apostate, and their counsels vain," Thou hast repell'd; while impiously they thought Thee to diminish, and from thee withdraw The number of thy worshippers. Who seeks To lessen thee, against his purpose serves To manifest the more thy might: his evil Thou usest, and from thence createst more good. Witness this new-made world, another heaven, From heaven-gate not far, founded, in view, On the clear hyaline, the glassy sea; Of amplitude almost immense, with stars Numerous, and every star, perhaps, a world Of destined habitation; but thou know'st Their seasons: among these the seat of men, Earth with her nether ocean circumfused, Their pleasant dwelling-place. Thrice happy men And sons of men, whom God hath thus advanced!
Created in his image there to dwell And worship him; and in reward to rule Over his works, on earth, in sea, or air, And multiply a race of worshippers Holy and just thrice happy, if they know Their happiness, and persevere upright!'
"So sung they, and the empyrean rung With hallelujahs: thus was sabbath kept. And thy request think now fulfill'd, that ask'd How first this world and face of things began And what before thy memory was done From the beginning: that posterity,
Inform'd by thee, might know: if else thou seek'st Aught not surpassing human measure, say "
Adain incires concerning celestial motions; is doubtfully ar swered, and exhorted to search rather things more worthy of knov lege; Adam assents; and, still desirous to detain Raphael, relates to him what he remembered since his own creation; his placing in Paradise; his talk with God concerning solitude and fit society; his first meeting and nuptials with Eve; his discourse with the angel thereupon, who, after admonitions repeated, departs.
THE angel ended, and in Adam's ear So charming left his voice, that he awhile Thought him still speaking, still stood fix'd to hear; Then, as new-waked, thus gratefully replied: "What thanks sufficient, or what recompense Equal, have I to render thee, divine Historian, who thus largely hast allay'd The thirst I had of knowledge, and vouchsafed This friendly condescension, to relate Things else by me unsearchable; now heard With wonder, but delight, and, as is due, With glory attributed to the high Creator? Something yet of doubt remains, Which only thy solution can resolve. When I behold this goodly frame, this world, Of heaven and earth consisting, and compute Their magnitudes; this earth, a spot, a grain, An atom, with the firmament compared And all her number'd stars, that seem to roll Spaces incomprehensible (for such
Their distance argues, and their swift return Diurnal,) merely to officiate light
Round this opacous earth, this punctual spot,
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