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

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!'231
"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 place240
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 hemisphere250
Divided. Light the Day, and darkness Night