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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 heav'n, 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. God saw,
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 heaven thick as a field:
Of light by far the greatest 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 thro' heaven's high road; the grey
Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danc'd,
Shedding sweet influence: less bright the moon,
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 heaven'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 their bright luminaries that set and rose;
Glad ev'ning 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 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 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 thro' groves
Of coral stray, or sporting with quick glance,
Shew to the sun their wav'd 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
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, à sea.

Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fens, and shores, Their brood as numʼrous hatch, from th' egg that

soon

Bursting with kindly rupture, forth disclos'd
Their callow young, but feather'd soon and fledge,
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 aëry 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 even, 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 breasts; 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, tow'r
The mid aërial sky: others on ground

train

Walk'd firm; the crested cock, whose clarion sounds
The silent hours; and th' other, whose gay
Adorns him, colour'd with the florid hues
Of rainbows and starry eyes. The waters thus
With fish replenish'd, and the air with fowl,
Ev'ning and morn solemnized the fifth day.

The sixth, and of Creation last, arose

With evening harps and matin, when GOD said,
Let th' earth bring forth fowl living in her kind,
Cattle, and creeping things, and beast of th' earth,
Each in their kind. The earth obey'd, and strait
Op'ning her fertile womb, teem'd at a birth
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms
Limb'd and fully 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

Past'ring at once, and in broad herds up-sprung.
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
And rampant, shakes his brinded mane: the ounce,
The libbarb, and the tiger, as the mole
Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw
In hillocks: the swift stag from under ground

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