Their blossoms: with high woods the hills were
With tufts the valleys, and each fountain side,
With borders long the rivers: that earth now
Seem'd like to Heav'n, a seat where Gods might
Or wander with delight, and love to haunt
Her sacred shades. Though God had yet not rain'd
Upon the earth, and man 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 th' earth 335
God made, and ev'ry herb, before it grew
On the green stem; God saw that it was good:
So ev❜n and morn recorded the third day.
Again the Almighty spake, Let there be Lights
High in th' expanse of Heaven, to divide
The day from night: and 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 Heav'n,
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 rule by day,
The less by night altern; and made the stars
And set them in the firmament of Heav'n
T'illuminate the earth, and rule the day
In their vicissitude, and rule the night,
And light from darkness to divide. God saw,
Surveying his great work, that it was good :
For, of celestial bodies, first the sun,
A mighty sphere, he framed, unlightsome first, 355 Though of ethereal mould: then form'd the moon Globose, and ev'ry magnitude of stars,
And sow'd with stars the Heav'n thick as a field:
Of light by far the greater part he took,
Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and placed 300 In the sun's orb, made porous to receive
And drink the liquid light, firm 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 gilds her horns;
By tincture or reflection they augment
Their small peculiar, though for human sight
So far remote, with diminution seen.
First in his east the glorious lamp was seen,
Regent of day, and all ta' horizon round
Invested with bright rays, jocuud to run
His longitude through Heav'n's high road. The grey Dawn and the Pleiades before him danced,
Shedding sweet influence. Less bright the moon,
But opposite in levell'd west was set
His mirror, with full face borrowing her light
From him, for other light she needed none
In that aspect; and still that distance keeps
Till night, then in the east her turn she shines, 380
Revolved on Heav'n's great axle; and her reign
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,
With thousand thousand stars, that then appear'd
Spangling the hemisphere. Then first adorn'd
With her bright luminaries that set and rose,
Glad ev'ning and glad morn crown'd the fourth day.
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 th' open firmament of Heav'n.
And God created the great whales, and each
Soul living, each that crept, which plenteously
The waters generated by their kinds,
And ev'ry bird of wing after his kind;
And saw that it was good, and bless'd them, saying, Be fruitful, multiply, and in the seas,
And lakes, and running streams, the waters fill;
And let the fowl be multiply'd on th' earth.
Forth with 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,
Shew to the san their waved coats dropt with gold,
Or in their pearly shells at ease, attend
373. For longitude Bentley reads his long career.
402. Sculls, a Saxon word, signifying an assembly,
Moist nutriment, or under rocks their food
In jointed armour 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
Stretch'd 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 num'rous hatch, from th' egg that soon
Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclosed
Their callow young, but feather'd soon and fledge 420
They summ'd their pens, and soaring th' 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 aëry caravan high over seas
Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing,
Easing their flight; so steers the prudent crane 430
Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air
Floats as they pass, fann'd with unnumber'd plumes.
From branch to branch the smaller birds with song
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings
Till ev'n, 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, tow'r
The mid aëreal sky: others on ground
Walk'd firm; the crested cock, whose clarion sounds The silent hours, and th' other whose gay train Adorns him, coloured with the florid hue
410. Bended, because so appearing when sporting in the sea. 421. Pens, from the Latin penna, a feather. Summ'd, a term in falconry, meaning full grown.
435. Milton's fondness for the nightingale is remarkably shewn in his repeated allusions to that bird.
Of rainbows and starry' eyes. The waters thus
With fish replenish'd, and the air with fowl
Ev'ning and morn solemnized the fifth day.
The sixth, and of creation last, arose
With ev'ning harps and matin, when God said, 450
Let th' earth bring forth soul-living in her kind,
Cattle and creeping things, and beast of th' earth,
Each in their kind. The earth obey'd; and straight
Opening her fertile womb, teem'd at a birth
Innum'rons living creatures, perfect forms,
Limb'd 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 walk'd:
The cattle in the fields and meadows green :
Those rare and solitary, these in flocks,
Past'ring at once, and in broad herds upsprung.
The grassy clods now calved; now half appear'd
The tawny 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 hillocs 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 rose, As plants: ambiguous between sea and land
The river-horse and scaly crocodile.
At once came forth whatever creeps the ground, 475
Insect or worm: those waved their limber fans
For wings, and smallest lineaments exact
In all the liveries deok'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
487. The libbard, the leopard, the word is used by Spenser and others.
471. The Behemoth is supposed by Bochart to be the river. horse. 482. Minims, from the Latin Minima.
The parsimonious emmet, provident
Of future, in small room large heart inclosed,
Pattern of just equality perhaps
Hereafter, join'd 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 gav'st 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 Heav'n 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 remain'd; 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 510 Magnanimous to correspond with Heav'n,
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 chief 515 Of all his works. Therefore th' Omuipotent
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 ev'ry creeping thing that creeps the ground.
This said, he form'd thee, Adam, thee, O Man,
Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils breathed 525
497. Virgil describes the serpent as having a mane.
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