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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;
Or, in their pearly shells at ease, attend
Moist nutriment; or under rocks their food,
In jointed armor, 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.
Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fens, and shores,
Their brood as numerous hatch from the egg that soon,
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

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Her annual voyage, borne on winds — the air
Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes;
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 aerial sky: Others on ground Walked firm; the crested cock, whose clarion sounds The silent hours, and the other, whose gay train Adorns him, colored 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:

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