3. Genesis.
(Author Uncertain.)
In the beginning did the Lord create
The heaven and earth: for formless was the land,
And hidden by the wave, and God immense
O’er the vast watery plains was hovering,
5 While chaos and black darkness shrouded all:
Which darkness, when God bade be from the pole
Disjoined, He speaks, “Let there be light;” and all
In the clear world was bright. Then, when the Lord
The first day’s work had finished, He formed
10 Heaven’s axis white with nascent clouds: the deep
Immense receives its wandering shores, and draws
The rivers manifold with mighty trains.
The third dun light unveiled earth’s face, and soon
(Its name assigned) the dry land’s story ’gins:
15 Together on the windy champaigns rise
The flowery seeds, and simultaneously
Fruit-bearing boughs put forth procurvant arms.
The fourth day, with the sun’s lamp generates
The moon, and moulds the stars with tremulous light
20 Radiant: these elements it gave as signs
To th’ underlying world, to teach the times
Which, through their rise and setting, were to change.
Then, on the fifth, the liquid streams receive
Their fish, and birds poise in the lower air
25 Their pinions many-hued. The sixth, again,
Supples the ice-cold snakes into their coils,
And over the whole fields diffuses herds
Of quadrupeds; and mandate gave that all
Should grow with multiplying seed, and roam
30 And feed in earth’s immensity.
All these
When power divine by mere command arranged,
Observing that things mundane still would lack
A ruler, thus It speaks: “With utmost care,
Assimilated to our own aspect,
35 Make We a man to reign in the whole orb.”
And him, although He with a single word
Could have compounded, yet Himself did deign
To shape him with His sacred own right hand,
Inspiring his dull breast from breast divine.
40 Whom when He saw formed in a likeness such
As is His own, He measures how he broods
Alone on gnawing cares. Straight way his eyes