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: 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.
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.
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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