Opening their various colours, and made gay
Her bosom smelling sweet: and these scar arce blown, Forth flourish'd thick the clust'ring vine, forth crept The smelling gourd, up stood the corny reed Embattled in her field, and th' humble shrub, And bush with frizzled hair implicit : last Rose as in dance the stately trees, and spread Their branches hung with copious fruit, or gemm'd 325 Their blossoms: with high woods the hills were crown'd, With tufts the valleys, and each fountain side, With borders long the rivers: that earth now Seem'd like to Heav'n, a seat where Gods might dwell, Or wander with delight, and love to haunt Her sacred shades: though God had yet not rain'd Upon the earth, and man to till the ground None was, but from the earth a dewy mist Went up, and water'd all the ground, and each Plant of the field, which ere it was in th' earth God made, and every herb, before it grew On the green stem; God saw that it was good: So ev❜n and morn recorded the third day.
AGAIN th' Almighty spake, Let there be lights
High in th' expanse of Heaven to divide
The day from night; and let them be for signs,
For seasons, and for days, and circling years, And let them be for lights as I ordain
Their office in the firmament of Heaven
To give light on the earth; and it was so.
And God made two great lights, great for their use
To Man, the greater to have rule by day,
The less by night altern; and made the stars, And set them in the firmament of Heaven To' illuminate the earth, and rule the day In their vicissitude, and rule the night, And light from darkness to divide. Surveying his great work, that it was good; For of celestial bodies first the sun
A mighty sphere he fram'd, unlightsome first, Though of ethereal mould: then form'd the moon Globose, and every magnitude of stars,
And sow'd with stars the Heav'n thick as a field:
Of light by far the greater part he took,
Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and plac'd In the sun's orb, made porous to receive And drink the liquid light, firm to retain Her gather'd beams, great palace now of light. Hither as to their fountain other stars
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light,
And hence the morning planet gilds her horns;
By tincture or reflection they augment
Their small peculiar, though from human sight So far remote, with diminution seen. First in his east the glorious lamp was seen, Regent of day, and all th' horizon round
Invested with bright rays, jocund to run
His longitude through Heav'n's high road; the grey Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danc'd
Shedding sweet influence: less bright the moon, 375 But opposite in levell'd west was set
His mirror, with full face borrowing her light
From him, for other light she needed none In that aspect, and still that distance keeps Till night, then in the east her turn she shines, Revolv'd on Heav'n's great axle, and her reign With thousand lesser lights dividual holds, With thousand thousand stars, that then appear'd Spangling the hemisphere: then first adorn'd With her bright luminaries that set and rose, Glad evening and glad morn crown'd the fourth day. AND God said, Let the waters generate
Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul; And let fowl fly above the earth, with wings Display'd on th' open firmament of Heaven.
And God created the great whales, and each Soul living, each that crept, which plenteously The waters generated by their kinds,
And every bird of wing after his kind;
And saw that it was good, and bless'd them, saying, Be fruitful, multiply, and in the seas
And lakes and running streams the waters fill; And let the fowl be multiply'd on th' earth. Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and bay
With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals
of fish that with their fins and shining scales
Glide under the green wave, in sculls that oft
Bank the mid-sea: part single, or with mate
Graze, the sea-weed their pasture, and through groves Of coral stray, or sporting with quick glance Show to the sun their wav'd coats dropt with gold, Or in their pearly shells at ease,
Moist nutriment, or under rocks their food In jointed armour watch; on smooth the seal, And bended dolphins play : part huge of bulk Wallowing unwieldy', enormous in their gait Tempest the ocean: there leviathan, Hugest of living creatures, on the deep Stretch'd like a promontory sleeps or swims, And seems a moving land, and at his gills Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea. Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fens and shores Their brood as numerous hatch, from th' egg that soon Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclos'd
Their callow young, but feather'd soon and fledge 420 'They summ'd their pens, and soaring th' air sublime With clang despis'd the ground, under a cloud
In prospect; there the eagle and the stork On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build:
Part loosely wing the region, part more wise
In common, rang'd in figure wedge their way,
Intelligent of seasons, and set forth
Their airy caravan high over seas
Flying, and over lands with mutual wing
Easing their flight; so steers the prudent crane Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air Floats, as they pass, fann'd with unnumber'd plumes: From branch to branch the smaller birds with song Solac'd the woods, and spread their painted wings Till ev'n, nor then the solemn nightingale Ceas'd warbling, but all night tun'd her soft lays: Others on silver lakes and rivers bath'd
Their downy breast; the swan with arched neck Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows Her state with oary feet: yet oft they quit The dank, and rising on stiff pennons, tower 'The mid aereal sky: Others on ground Walk'd firm; the crested cock whose clarion sounds The silent hours, and th' other whose gay train Adorns him, colour'd with the florid hue Of rainbows and starry' eyes. The waters thus With fish replenish'd, and the air with fowl, Ev'ning and morn solemniz'd the fifth day.
THE sixth, and of creation last arose With evening harps and matin, when God said, Let th' earth bring forth soul living in her kind, Cattle and creeping things, and beast of th' earth, Each in their kind. The earth obey'd, and straight Opening her fertile womb, teem'd at a birth Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, Limb'd and full grown out of the ground uprose As from his lair the wild beast where he wons
In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den;
Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walk'd; The cattle in the fields and meadows green:
Those rare and solitary, these in flocks
Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung.
The grassy clods now calv'd, now half appear'd
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, 465 And rampant shakes his brinded mane; the ounce,
The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole
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