Remembering Milton in the Night at Sea

...Through the gloom were seen
Ten Thousand Banners rise into the Air
with Orient Colours Waving....
-Milton's Paradise Lost

The night was pitch dark. The whole sea luminous.
Every part of the water which by day is seen as foam
glowed with pale light. The vessel drove before her bows

Two billows of liquid phosphorus. Her wake was a milky train.
As far as the eye reached, the crest of every wave was bright;
& from the reflected light the sky-just above the horizon-

not so utterly dark as the rest of the Heavens.
Impossible to behold this plain of matter, as it were melted
& consumed by heat, without remembering Milton!