as form'd, but in the womb as yet
on immature involved,

- all the face of earth

ot idle; but, with warm

ning all her globe,
great mother to conceive,

n genial moisture; when God said,
ather'd 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 :
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 impress'd
On the swift floods: as armies at the call
Of trumpets (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 ooze 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, carth"; 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.

u And heaven.

So Gen. i. 8. According to the Hebrews, there were three heavens.

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The first is the

air, wherein the clouds move, and the birds fly; the second is the starry heaven; and the third is the habitation of the angels and the seat of God's glory. Milton is speaking here of the first heaven, as he mentions the others in other places.-NEWTON.

Be gather'd now, ye waters.

See Gen. i. 9; and Psalm civ. 6, et seq.-NEWTON.

w The dry land, earth.

These are again the words of Genesis formed into verse, i. 10, 11. But when he comes to the descriptive part, he then opens a finer vein of poetry.-NEWTON.

He scarce had said, when the bare earth, till then
Desert and bare, unsightly, unadorn'd,

Brought forth the tender grass, whose verdure clad
Her universal face with pleasant green;

Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flower'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 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 gemm'd
Their blossoms: with high woods the fields were crown'd,
With tufts the valleys, and each fountain-side;
With borders long the rivers: that earth now

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Seem'd like to heaven, a seat where gods might dwell,

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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 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.

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 sow'd with stars the heaven, thick as a field:
Of light by far the greater part he took,

See Esdras vi. 44.-TODD.

* Sudden flower'd.

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 heaven's high road; the gray
Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced,
Shedding sweet influence: less bright the moon,
But opposite in level'd 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 appear'd
Spangling the hemisphere: then first adorn'd
With their bright luminaries, that set and rose,
Glad evening and glad morn crown'd the fourth day.
And God said, Let the waters a 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

a

The Pleiades, before him danced.

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These are beautiful images, and very much resemble the famous picture of the Morning by Guido, where the sun is represented in his chariot, with Aurora flying before him, shedding flowers, and seven beautiful nymph-like figures, dancing before and about his chariot, which are commonly taken for the hours, but possibly may be the Pleiades, as they are seven in number, and it is not easy to assign a reason why the Hours should be signified by that number particularly. The picture is on a ceiling at Rome; but there are copies of it in England, and an excellent print by Jac. Frey. 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 "Vergilia." Our poet therefore, in saying that the Pleiades danced before the sun at his creation, intimates very plainly that the creation was in the spring, according to the common opinion, Virg. Georg. ii. 338, &c.-NEWTON. Shedding sweet influence.

See Job xxxviii. 31:-" Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades ?"HUME.

the

And God said, Let the waters.

This, and eleven verses following, are almost word for word from Genesis, i. 20–22: poet afterwards branches out his general account of the fifth day's creation into the several particulars.-NEWTON.

N

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,
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 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 :
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
Till even; nor then the solemn nightingale
Sculls is undoubtedly shoals.

e The solemn nightingale.

Milton's fondness and admiration of the nightingale may be seen, as Newton has

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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 aereal sky: others on ground

Walk'd firm; the crested cock, whose clarion sounds
The silent hours; and the other, whose gay train
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 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
Pasturing 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 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 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

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remarked, in Il Penseroso,' in his first sonnet, and again in Paradise Lost,' b. iii. 38; b. iv. 648, 771; b. v. 40; b. viii. 518.-TODD.