MILTON'S MOON

ABSTRACT In discussing the sublimity of Paradise Lost, Addison distinguished between the turbulence of the War in Heaven and the “composed and sedate majesty” of the Creation. The moonlit evening in Eden (PL IV, 598–609) is a supreme instance of that milder sublime and one of the great moments of the poem. At the climax of Milton's description of the arrival of evening, the moon “unveil'd her peerless Light, / And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.” This startling moment is an emblem of divine presence and protectiveness in unfallen Eden. Familiar with moon lore and with poetic descriptions of the moon, Milton shunned allegorical links to the Virgin and the historical church and seemed to associate this unveiling-investing gesture with Christ, the “unclouded deity,” with the Creator who invests the world “as with a mantle,” and with the process of poetic creation in a poet, his eyes “veiled,” who prays that mists might be purged and that he himself might be “clothed in light.” But after the Fall, the benign and creative moon is simply “blank."