And God said, Let the waters generate Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul: And let fowl fly above the earth, with wings Display'd 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 that waters fill;
And let the fowl be multiplied on the earth.
Forwith 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 seaweed their pasture, and through
groves
Of coral stray; or, sporting with quick glance, Show to the sun their waved coats dropp'd with gold;
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 unwieldly, 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
raws in, and at his trunk spouts, out a sea. Jeanwhile the tepid caves, and fens and shores Their brood as numerous hatch, from the egg that
ursting with kindly rupture forth disclosed
Their callow young; but feather'd soon and fledge hey summ'd their pens; and, soaring the air sublime,
With clang despised the ground, under a cloud
prospect; there the eagle and the stork
On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build;
art loosely wing the region, part more wise
common, ranged in figure, wedge their way,
telligent of seasons, and set forth,
Their aery caravan, high over seas
lying, over lands, with mutual wing
lasing their flight; so steers the prudent crane
ler annual voyage, borne on winds; the air
loats as they pass, fann'd with unnumber'd plumes:
'rom branch to branch the smaller birds with song
olaced the woods, and spread their painted wings
fill even; nor then the solemn nightingale
leased 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
Ier state with oary feet; yet oft they quit
The dank, and, rising on stiff pennons, tower
The mid aerial sky: others on ground
Walk'd firm; the crested cock whose clarion
The silent hours, and the other whose gay train VOL. II.
Adorns him, colour'd with the florid hue
Of rainbows and starry eyes. The waters thus
With fish replenish'd, 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 obey'd, and straight
Opening her fertile womb teem'd at a birth
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
Limb'd and full grown out of the ground uprose
As from his lair, the wild beast where wons
In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den;
Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walk'd
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 clouds now calved; now half appear'd
The tawney 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 rast
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 smaller lineaments exact
In all the liveries deck'd 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,
Wondrous 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 appear'd
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 gavest them
Needless to thee repeated; nor unknown
The serpent, subtlest beast of all the field,
Of huge extent sometimes, with brazen eyes
And hairy mane terrific, though to thee
Not noxious, but obedient at thy call.
Now heaven in all her glory shone, and roll'd
Her motions, as the great first Mover's hand
First wheel'd their course: Earth in her rich
attire
Consummate lovely smiled; air, water, earth,
By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, was walk'd,
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
Magnanimous to correspond with heaven,
But grateful to acknowledge whence his good
Descends, thither with heart, and voice, and eyes
Directed in devotion, to adore
And worship God supreme, who made him chie
Of all his works: therefore the Omnipotent
Eternal Father (for where is not he
Present?) thus to his Son audibly spake :
Let us make now man in our image, man
In our similitude, and let them rule
Over the fish and fowl of sea and air,
Beast of the field, and over all the earth,
And every creeping thing that creeps the ground.
This said, he formed thee, Adam, thee, O man,
Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils breathed
The breath of life; in his own image he
Created thee, in the image of God
Express; and thou becamest a living soul.
Male he created thee; but thy consort
Female, for race; then bless'd mankind, and said,
Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth;
Subdue it, and throughout dominion hold
Over fish of the sea, and fowl of the air,
And every living thing that moves on the earth.
Wherever thus created, for no place
Is yet distinct by name, thence, as thou know'st,
He brought thee into this delicious grove,
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