第 20 页

This be thy just circumference, O World!

Thus God the Heaven created, thus the Earth,

Matter unformed and void: Darkness profound

Covered the abyss: but on the watery calm

His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread,

And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth

Throughout the fluid mass; but downward purged

The black tartareous cold infernal dregs,

Adverse to life: then founded, then conglobed

Like things to like; the rest to several place

Disparted, and between spun out the air;

And Earth self-balanced on her center hung.

Let there be light, said God; and forthwith Light

Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,

Sprung from the deep; and from her native east

To journey through the aery gloom began,

Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun

Was not; she in a cloudy tabernacle

Sojourned the while. God saw the light was good;

And light from darkness by the hemisphere

Divided: light the Day, and darkness Night,

He named. Thus was the first day even and morn:

Nor past uncelebrated, nor unsung

By the celestial quires, when orient light

Exhaling first from darkness they beheld;

Birth-day of Heaven and Earth; with joy and shout

The hollow universal orb they filled,

And touched their golden harps, and hymning praised

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God and his works; Creator him they sung,

Both when first evening was, and when first morn.

Again, God said, Let there be firmament

Amid the waters, and let it divide

The waters from the waters; and God made

The firmament, expanse of liquid, pure,

Transparent, elemental air, diffused

In circuit to the uttermost convex

Of this great round; partition firm and sure,

The waters underneath from those above

Dividing: for as earth, so he the world

Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide

Crystalline ocean, and the loud misrule

Of Chaos far removed; lest fierce extremes

Contiguous might distemper the whole frame:

And Heaven he named the Firmament: So even

And morning chorus sung the second day.

The Earth was formed, but in the womb as yet

Of waters, embryon immature involved,

Appeared not: over all the face of Earth

Main ocean flowed, not idle; but, with warm

Prolifick humour softening all her globe,

Fermented the great mother to conceive,

Satiate with genial moisture; when God said,

Be gathered 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:

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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, uprolled,

As drops on dust conglobing from the dry:

Part rise in crystal wall, or ridge direct,

For haste; such flight the great command impressed

On the swift floods: As armies at the call

Of trumpet (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 oose 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 called 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

Desart and bare, unsightly, unadorned,

Brought forth the tender grass, whose verdure clad

Her universal face with pleasant green;

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Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flowered

Opening their various colours, and made gay

Her bosom, smelling sweet: and, these scarce blown,

Forth flourished thick the clustering vine, forth crept

The swelling gourd, up stood the corny reed

Embattled in her field, and the humble shrub,

And bush with frizzled hair implicit: Last

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

Their branches hung with copious fruit, or gemmed

Their blossoms: With high woods the hills were crowned;

With tufts the valleys, and each fountain side;

With borders long the rivers: that Earth now

Seemed like to Heaven, a seat where Gods might dwell,

Or wander with delight, and love to haunt

Her sacred shades: though God had yet not rained

Upon the Earth, and man to till the ground

None was; but from the Earth a dewy mist

Went up, and watered 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 spake, Let there be lights

High in the 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 Heaven,

To give light on the Earth; and it was so.

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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 Heaven

To 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,

Though of ethereal mould: then formed the moon

Globose, and every magnitude of stars,

And sowed 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; firm to retain

Her gathered 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 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

His longitude through Heaven’s high road; the gray

Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced,

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Shedding sweet influence: Less bright the moon,

But opposite in levelled west was set,

His mirrour, 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,

Revolved on Heaven’s great axle, and her reign

With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,

With thousand thousand stars, that then appeared

Spangling the hemisphere: Then first adorned

With their bright luminaries that set and rose,

Glad evening and glad morn crowned 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

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,

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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 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

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.

Mean while 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

Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air

Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes:

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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 tun’d 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 aereal sky: Others on ground

Walked firm; the crested cock whose clarion sounds

The silent hours, and the other whose gay train

Adorns him, coloured 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:

Those rare and solitary, these in flocks

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Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung.

The grassy clods now calved; now half appeared

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 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 rose,

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 smallest lineaments exact

In all the liveries decked 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,

Wonderous 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 appeared

The female bee, that feeds her husband drone

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Deliciously, and builds her waxen cells

With honey stored: The rest are numberless,

And thou their natures knowest, and gavest them names,

Needless to thee repeated; nor unknown

The serpent, subtlest beast of all the field,

Of huge extent sometimes, with brazen eyes

And hairy mane terrifick, though to thee

Not noxious, but obedient at thy call.

Now Heaven in all her glory shone, and rolled

Her motions, as the great first Mover’s hand

First wheeled their course: Earth in her rich attire

Consummate lovely smiled; air, water, earth,

By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, was walked,

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 chief

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

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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,