"On heavenly ground they stood; and from the shore They view'd the vast immeasurable abyss Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild, Up from the bottom turn'd by furious winds And surging waves, as mountains, to assault Heaven's highth, and with the centre mix the pole. 'Silence, ye troubled waves, and thou deep, peace,' Said then the omnific Word: 'Your discord end!'... 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.... The earth was form'd; but in the womb as yet Of waters, embryon immature involved, Appear'd not: over all the face of earth Main ocean flow'd, not idle, but, with warm Prolific humour softening all her globe, Fermented the great mother to conceive, Satiate with genial moisture, when God said, 'Be gather'd now, ye waters under heaven, Into one place, and let dry land appear.' Immediately the mountains huge appear Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave Into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky: So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep, Capacious bed of waters: thither they Hasted with glad precipitance, uproll'd, As drops on dust conglobing from the dry."[216] This is primitive scenery; immense bare seas and mountains, as Raphael Sanzio outlines them in the background of his biblical paintings. Milton embraces the general effects, and handles the whole as easily as his Jehovah. Let us quit superhuman and fanciful spectacles. A simple sunset equals them. Milton peoples it with solemn allegories and regal figures, and the sublime is born in the poet, as just before it was born from the subject: "The sun, now fallen... Arraying with reflected purple and gold The clouds that on his western throne attend: Now came still evening on, and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompanied, for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length, Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw."[217] The changes of the light become here a religious procession of vague beings who fill the soul with veneration. So sanctified, the poet prays. Standing by the "inmost bower" of Adam and Eve, he says: "Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source Of human offspring, sole propriety In Paradise of all things common else! By thee adulterous lust was driven from men Among the bestial herds to range by thee, Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure, Relations dear, and all the charities Of father, son, and brother, first were known."[218]