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 With their bright luminaries that set and rose, Glad evening and glad morn crowned 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 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, 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; 406
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 Stretched 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. Mean while the tepid caves, and fens, and shores, Their brood as numerous hatch, from the egg Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclosed Their callow young; but feathered soon and fledge 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 Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air
Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes: 432
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 Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit
The dank, and, rising on stiff
pennons, tower The mid aëreal sky: Others on ground
Walked firm; the crested cock whose clarion sounds The silent hours, and the other whose gay train Adorns him, coloured with the florid hue
Of rainbows and starry eyes. The waters thus With fish replenished, and the air with fowl, Evening and morn solemnized the fifth day.
The sixth, and of creation last, arose
With evening harps and matin; when God said, Let the Earth bring forth soul living in her kind, Cattle and creeping things, and beast of the Earth, Each in their kind. The Earth obeyed, and straight Opening her fertile womb teemed at a birth Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
Limbed and full grown: Out of the ground up rose, 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 walked: 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 calved; now half appeared 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 libbard, and the tiger, as the mole Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw
In hillocks: The swift stag from under ground
Bore up his branching head: Scarce from his mould Behemoth biggest born of earth upheaved
His vastness: Fleeced the flocks and bleating rose, As plants: Ambiguous between sea and land The river-horse, and scaly crocodile.
At once came forth whatever creeps the ground, Insect or worm: those waved their limber fans For wings, and smallest lineaments exact In all the liveries decked of summer's pride With spots of gold and purple, azure and green: These, as a line, their long dimension drew, Streaking the ground with sinuous trace; not all Minims of nature; some of serpent-kind, Wonderous in length and corpulence, involved Their snaky folds, and added wings. First crept
The parsimonious emmet, provident
Of future; in small room large heart enclosed; Pattern of just equality perhaps
Hereafter, joined in her popular tribes
Of commonalty: Swarming next appeared The female bee, that feeds her husband drone Deliciously, and builds her waxen cells
With honey stored: The rest are numberless, And thou their natures know'st, and gav'st them names, 493 Needless to thee repeated; nor unknown
The serpent, subtlest beast of all the field, Of huge extent sometimes, with brazen eyes And hairy mane terrifick, though to thee Not noxious, but obedient at thy call.
Now Heaven in all her glory shone, and rolled
Her motions, as the great first Mover's hand
First wheeled their course: Earth in her rich attire Consummate lovely smiled; air, water, earth,
By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, was walked, Frequent; and of the sixth day yet remained: There wanted yet the master-work, the end Of all yet done; a creature, who, not prone And brute as other creatures, but endued With sanctity of reason, might erect His stature, and upright with front serene Govern the rest, self-knowing; and from thence
« ForrigeFortsæt » |