And on the washy oose 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, 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 gay
Her bosom, smelling sweet: and, these scarce blown, Forth flourished thick the clustering vine, forth crept 320 The swelling 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
Their blossoms: 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, 329
Or wander with delight, and love to haunt
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 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 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, Though of ethereal mould: then formed the moon 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 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, Regent of day, and all the horizon round Invested with bright rays, jocund to run
His longitude through Heaven's high road; the gray Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced, Shedding sweet influence: Less bright the moon, But opposite in levelled west was set,
His mirrour, 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,
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