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 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,

Shedding sweet influence: Less bright the moon,

But opposite in levelled 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,

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,

Graze the sea-weed their pasture, and through groves

Of coral stray; or, sporting with quick glance,