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Home  »  Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse  »  The Spacious Firmament

Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.

By John Milton (1608–1674)

The Spacious Firmament

 
AND 1 for the heaven’s wide circuit, let it speak
The Maker’s high magnificence, who built
So spacious, and His line stretched out so far,
That man may know he dwells not in his own:
An edifice too large for him to fill,        5
Lodged in a small partition, and the rest
Ordained for uses to his Lord best known.
Nor think, though men were none,
That heaven would want spectators, God want praise;
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth        10
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep;
All these with ceaseless praise His works behold
Both day and night.
 
Note 1. “The Spacious Firmament” is from “Paradise Lost,” viii. 100. [back]