No war, or battle’s sound
Was heard the world around.
The idle spear and shield were high up hung.

The lines evoke an idealized interval of universal peace: war’s noises have fallen silent, and weapons are rendered “idle,” ceremonially hung up rather than used. The imagery suggests not merely a pause in conflict but a world reordered away from violence—arms become relics or trophies, removed from circulation. In Milton’s poetic idiom, such stillness often functions as a moral and spiritual contrast to the tumult of fallen or corrupted states: quiet signifies harmony, right order, and the possibility of innocence restored. The diction (“world around,” “high up hung”) enlarges the scene from a local truce to a cosmic calm, implying peace as a condition that reshapes the whole created order.