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:

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 error 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, 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;

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;