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Wave rolling after wave, where way they found- The herbs
If steep, with torrent rapture, if through plain, and trees
Soft-ebbing; nor withstood them rock or hill; 300
But they, or underground, or circuit wide
With serpent error wandering, found their way,
And on the washy ooze deep channels wore :
Easy, ere God had bid the ground be dry,
All but within those banks where rivers now
Stream, and perpetual draw their humid train.
The dry land Earth, and the great receptacle
Of congregated waters he called Seas;

And saw that it was good, and said, "Let the
Earth

Put forth the verdant grass, herb yielding seed, 310
And fruit-tree yielding fruit after her kind,
Whose seed is in herself upon the Earth!"
He scarce had said when the bare Earth, till
then

Desert and bare, unsightly, unadorned,

Brought forth the tender grass, whose verdure
clad

Her universal face with pleasant green;
Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flowered,
Opening their various colours, and made
Her bosom, smelling sweet; and, these scarce
blown,

gay

Forth flourished thick the clustering vine, forth

320

crept The smelling gourd, up stood the corny reed Embattled in her field: and the 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 gemmed

The Their blossoms.

Lights in
Heaven

With high woods the hills

were crowned, With tufts the valleys and each fountain-side, With borders long the rivers, that Earth now Seemed like to Heaven, a seat where gods might dwell,

Or wander with delight, and love to haunt 330
Her sacred shades; though God had yet not
rained

Upon the Earth, and man to till the ground
None was, but from the Earth a dewy mist
Went up and watered all the ground, and each
Plant of the field, which ere it was in the Earth
God made, and every herb before it
grew
On the green stem. God saw that it was good;
So even and morn recorded the third Day.
'Again the Almighty spake, "Let there be
Lights

340

High in the 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 350
In their vicissitude, and rule the night,
And light from darkness to divide. God saw,
Surveying his great work, that it was good:
For, of celestial bodies, first the Sun

A mighty sphere he framed, unlightsome first, Sun,
Though of ethereal mould; then formed the Moon,
Moon
and Stars

Globose, and every magnitude of Stars,

And sowed with stars the heaven thick as a field.
Of light by far the greater part he took,
Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and
placed

360

In the Sun's orb, made porous to receive
And drink the liquid light, firm to retain
Her gathered 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, 370
Regent of day, and all the horizon round
Invested with bright rays, jocund to run
His longitude through heaven's high road; the
grey

Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced,
Shedding sweet influence. Less bright the

Moon,

But opposite in levelled 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, 380
Revolved on heaven's great axle, and her reign
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,
With thousand thousand stars, that then appeared
Spangling the hemisphere. Then first adorned

The With her bright luminaries, that set and rose, fishy fry Glad evening and glad morn crowned the fourth

in sounds

and seas

Day.

390

· And God said, "Let the waters generate
Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul;
And let Fowl fly above the earth, with wings
Displayed on the 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 blessed them,
saying,

"Be fruitful, multiply, and, in the seas,

And lakes, and running streams, the waters fill;
And let the fowl be multiplied on the earth!"
Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and
bay,

400

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 waved coats dropt with gold,

Or, in their pearly shells at ease, attend

Moist nutriment, or under rocks their food
In jointed armour watch; on smooth the seal
And bended dolphins play: part, huge of bulk, 410
Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait,
Tempest the ocean. There leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, on the deep

fowls

after
their kind

Stretched like a promontory, sleeps or swims, All
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 the egg,
that soon,

Bursting with kindly rupture, forth disclosed
Their callow young; but feathered soon and
fledge

420

They summed their pens, and, soaring the air
sublime,

With clang despised 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, ranged in figure, wedge their way,
Intelligent of seasons, and set forth

Their aery caravan, high over seas

Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing
Easing their flight: so steers the prudent crane 430
Her annual voyage, borne on winds: the air
Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered
plumes.

From branch to branch the smaller birds with

song

Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings,

Till even; nor then the solemn nightingale Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her soft lays.

Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed

Their downy breast; the swan, with arched neck

Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows

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