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Main ocean flow'd, not idle; but, with warm
Prolific humour softening all her globe,
Fermented the great mother to conceive,
Satiate with genial moisture; when God said,
Be gather'd now, ye waters under heaven,
Into one place, and let dry land appear.
Immediately the mountains huge appear
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave
Into the clouds: their tops ascend the sky:
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low
Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep,
Capacious bed of waters: thither they
Hasted with glad precipitance, uproll'd,
As drops on dust conglobing from the dry:
Part rise in crystal wall, or ridge direct,
For haste; such flight the great command impress'd

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On the swift floods: as armies at the call

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Of trumpets (for of armies thou hast heard)
Troop to their standard; so the watery throng,
Wave rolling after wave, where way they found,
If steep, with torrent rapture; if through plain,
Soft ebbing: nor withstood them rock or hill;
But they, or under ground, or circuit wide

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With serpent errour 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 call'd 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, unadorn'd,
Brought forth the tender grass, whose verdure clad
Her universal face with pleasant green;
Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flower'd,
Opening their various colours, and made gay
Her bosom, smelling sweet: and these, scarce blown,
Forth flourish'd thick the clustering vine, forth crept
The swelling gourd, up stood the corny reed

Be gather'd now, ye waters.

See Gen. i. 9; and Psalm civ. 6, et seq. NEWTON.

w The dry land, earth.

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These are again the words of Genesis formed into verse, i. 10, 11. But when he

comes to the descriptive part, he then opens a finer vein of poetry. -NEWTON.

* Sudden flower'd.

See Esdras vi. 44. - TODD.

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Rose, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread

Their brauches huge with copious fruit, of co

Their blossoms: wich high woods the folde vem arginald,

With tufts the valleye, and each fountain-cing

With borders long the rivers that earth now

Seem'd like to heaven, & cont where gods right deell

Or wander with delight, mad love to haunt

Hor sacred shalles: though God had yet not rain'd
Upon the earth, and wan 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 the earth,
God made, and

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