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Their small peculiar, though from human sight

First in his east the glorious lamp was seen,

His longitude through heaven's high road; the grey

Shedding sweet influence. Less bright the moon,

Regent of day, and all the horizon round

Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced,

His mirror, with full face borrowing her light

From him; for other light she needed none

In that aspect, and still that distance keeps

With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,

Spangling the hemisphere. Then first adorned

With her bright luminaries, that set and rose,

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

And lakes, and running streams, the waters fill,

Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and bay,

And let the fowl be multiplied on the earth.

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,

The waters generated by their kinds,

Be fruitful, multiply, and in the seas,

With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals

And every bird of wing after his kind,

Till night; then in the east her turn she shines,

Revolved on heaven's great axle, and her reign

With thousand thousand stars, that then appeared

Glad evening and glad morn crowned the fourth day.

And saw that it was good, and blessed them, saying:-

And God said:—Let the waters generate

Invested with bright rays, jocund to run

But opposite in levelled west was set,

So far remote, with diminution seen.

PARADISE LOST.

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. 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 feathered soon and fledge They summed their pens,4 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; From branch to branch the smaller birds with song Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings Till even; nor then the solemn nightingale

¹ Tempest the ocean. - From the Italian tempestare-bring tempest to it.

^"The huge dolphin tempesting the wave."-Pope. \* Leviathan .- The whale seems to be intended.

^· Their callow young. - Young resembling birds unfledged.

They summed their pens. Summed is a word from falconry. The sense here is—put on their wing feathers.