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
On the swift floods: as armies at the call

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
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:

W

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.

280

285

290

295

300

305

310

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;

315

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

820

Be gather'd now, ye waters.

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

w The dry land, earth.

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.

See Esdras vi. 44.-TODD.

* Sudden flower'd.

1

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

Their brauches hung with copious fruit, or on

Their blossoms with high woods the fold wer areale,
With tufts the valleys, and each fountain-des

With borders long the rives that earth o

Seem'd like to heaven, & pont where gode right dwelt

Or yander with delight, and love to haunt

Her sacred ehalies: though God had yet not rain'd
Upon the earth, sad man to till the ground
Non 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 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 spoke, Let there be lights
High in the expanse of heaven, to divide
The day from night; nad 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 scle 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,
Aud light from darkness to divide. God saw,
Surveying his great work, that it was good;
For of celestini 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 sow'd, 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; fem 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 gils 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