Goodnight ladies. (Patreon)

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth

Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep:

All these with ceaseless praise his works behold

Both day and night: how often from the steep

Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard

Celestial voices to the midnight air,

Sole, or responsive each to other’s note

Singing their great Creator: oft in bands

While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk

With Heav’nly touch of instrumental sounds In full harmonic number joined, their songs

Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to Heaven.

Thus talking hand in hand alone they pass'd

On to thir blissful Bower; it was a place 

Chos'n by the sovran Planter, when he fram'd

All things to mans delightful use; the roofe

Of thickest covert was inwoven shade

Laurel and Mirtle, and what higher grew

Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either side 

Acanthus, and each odorous bushie shrub

Fenc'd up the verdant wall; each beauteous flour,

Iris all hues, Roses, and Gessamin

Rear'd high thir flourisht heads between, and wrought Mosaic; underfoot the Violet, 

Crocus, and Hyacinth with rich inlay

Broiderd the ground, more colour'd then with stone

Of costliest Emblem: other Creature here

Beast, Bird, Insect, or Worm durst enter none;

Such was thir awe of Man. In shadie Bower 

More sacred and sequesterd, though but feignd,

Pan or Silvanus never slept, nor Nymph,

Nor Faunus haunted. Here in close recess

With Flowers, Garlands, and sweet-smelling

Herbs Espoused Eve deckt first her Nuptial Bed, 

And heav'nlyly Quires the Hymenæan sung,

What day the genial Angel to our Sire Brought her in naked beauty more adorn'd

More lovely then Pandora, whom the Gods Endowd with all thir gifts, and O too like 

In sad event, when to the unwiser Son

Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnar'd

Mankind with her faire looks, to be aveng'd

On him who had stole Joves authentic fire.

Thus at thir shadie Lodge arriv'd, both stood

Both turnd, and under op'n Skie ador'd

The God that made both Skie, Air, Earth and Heav'n

Which they beheld, the Moons

resplendent Globe

And starrie Pole

—John Milton, from Book IV in Paradise Lost, lines 684-724.

Line 688. divide the night: into watches. Roman armies sounded a trumpet when changing the watch; angelic guards do it to multipart music (”full harmonic number”).

line 690. blissfull bower: cf. Spenser’s account of the bower within the Garden of Adonis where Venus sequesters the mortally wounded Adonis from “stygian gods” (FQ III.6.43–49).