Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/166

Earth, and the garden of God, with cedars crowded
Above all hills. As when by night the glass261
Of Galileo, less assured, observes
Imagined lands and regions in the moon;
Or pilot from amidst the Cyclades
Delos or Samos first appearing kens,
A cloudy spot. Down thither prone in flight
He speeds, and, through the vast ethereal sky,
Sails between worlds and worlds with steady wing,
Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan
Winnows the buxom air; till, within soar270
Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he seems
A phœnix, gazed by all, as that sole bird,
When, to enshrine his reliques in the Sun's
Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies.
At once on the eastern cliff of Paradise
He lights, and to his proper shape returns,
A Seraph winged. Six wings he wore, to shade
His lineaments divine; the pair that clad
Each shoulder broad came mantling o'er his breast
With regal ornament; the middle pair280
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted his loins and thighs, with downy gold
And colors dipped in heaven; the third his feet
Shadowed from either heel, with feathered mail,
Sky-tinctured grain. Like Maia's son he stood,