And light from darkness by the hemisphere
Divided: light the day, and darkness night,
He named. Thus was the first day ev'n and morn:
Nor past uncelebrated, nor unsung
By the celestial choirs, when orient light
Exhaling first from darkness they beheld,
Birth-day of heav'n and earth; with joy and shout'
The hollow universal orb they fill'd,
And touch'd their golden harps, and hymning praised
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 heav'n He named the firmament: so ev'n
And morning chorus sung the second day.
The earth was form'd, but, in the womb as yet
Of waters embryon immature involved,
Appear'd not over all the face of earth
Main ocean flow'd, not idle, but with warm
Prolific humour soft'ning all her globe
Fermented the great mother to conceive,
Satiate with genial moisture, when God said,
Be gather'd now, ye waters under heav'n,
Into one place, and let dry land appear.
Immediately the mountains huge appear
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave
2 Firmament signifies expansion.-NEWTON.
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 imprest
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 error 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 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, unadorned,
Brought forth the tender grass, whose verdure clad
Her universal face with pleasant green;
Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flow'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
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 gemm'd
Their blossoms: with high woods the hills were crown'd,
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 dwell,
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 the earth,
GOD made, and every herb, before it grew
On the green stem: GOD saw that it was good:
So ev❜n and morn recorded the third day.
Again th' 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,
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 form'd the moon
Globose, and every 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
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 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 heav'n's high road: the gray
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 respect; and still that distance keeps
Till night, then in the east her turn she shines,
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 their bright luminaries, that set and rose,
Glad ev'ning and glad morn crown'd the fourth day.
And God said, Let the waters generate 2
Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul:
And let fowl fly above the earth, with wings
Display'd on the 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 every 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 multiplied on the earth.
Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and bay,
1 The Pleiades are seven stars in the neck of the constellation Taurus, which, rising about the time of the vernal equinox, are called by the Latins "Vergiliæ." Milton, therefore, in saying that the Pleiades danced before the sun at his creation, implies that creation began with the spring. From NEWTON. It has been
a recent idea of astronomers, that the Pleiades, or seven suns-for fixed stars are suns-are the centre of the universe round which the heavens revolve; but this is not yet clearly ascertained. Job speaks of "the sweet influences of the Pleiades."-See Job xxxviii, 31.
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 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
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 numerous hatch from the egg, that soon
Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclosed
Their callow young; but feather'd soon and fledge,
They summ'd 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 :3
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, fann'd with unnumber'd plumes.
From branch to branch the smaller birds with song
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings
We say a "school of
whales" for a shoal now. Scull comes from the Saxon sceole, an assembly.
"Pens are feathers. Here the meaning is, "They used their pinions as fullfledged birds."
3 Jeremiah xxxix. 27, 28.
4 Migratory birds fly in shape of a wedge, one bird leading alternately.
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