OF bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing:
 Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
 Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
 'Till I my long laborious work compleat:
 And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
 Deduc'd from Nature's birth, to Caesar's times.
 The Creation of Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
 the World And Heav'n's high canopy, that covers all,
 One was the face of Nature; if a face:
 Rather a rude and indigested mass:
 A lifeless lump, unfashion'd, and unfram'd,
 Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam'd.
 No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
 No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
 Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky,
 Nor pois'd, did on her own foundations lye:
 Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
 But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
 Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
 And water's dark abyss unnavigable.
 No certain form on any was imprest;
 All were confus'd, and each disturb'd the rest.
 For hot and cold were in one body fixt;
 And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixt.
 But God, or Nature, while they thus contend,
 To these intestine discords put an end:
 Then earth from air, and seas from earth were
 driv'n,
 And grosser air sunk from aetherial Heav'n.
 Thus disembroil'd, they take their proper place;
 The next of kin, contiguously embrace;
 And foes are sunder'd, by a larger space.
 The force of fire ascended first on high,
 And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky:
 Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire;
 Whose atoms from unactive earth retire.
 Earth sinks beneath, and draws a num'rous throng
 Of pondrous, thick, unwieldy seeds along.
 About her coasts, unruly waters roar;
 And rising, on a ridge, insult the shore.
 Thus when the God, whatever God was he,
 Had form'd the whole, and made the parts agree,
 That no unequal portions might be found,
 He moulded Earth into a spacious round:
 Then with a breath, he gave the winds to blow;
 And bad the congregated waters flow.
 He adds the running springs, and standing lakes;
 And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
 Some part, in Earth are swallow'd up, the most
 In ample oceans, disembogu'd, are lost.
 He shades the woods, the vallies he restrains
 With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.
 And as five zones th' aetherial regions bind,
 Five, correspondent, are to Earth assign'd:
 The sun with rays, directly darting down,
 Fires all beneath, and fries the middle zone:
 The two beneath the distant poles, complain
 Of endless winter, and perpetual rain.
 Betwixt th' extreams, two happier climates hold
 The temper that partakes of hot, and cold.
 The fields of liquid air, inclosing all,
 Surround the compass of this earthly ball:
 The lighter parts lye next the fires above;
 The grosser near the watry surface move:
 Thick clouds are spread, and storms engender there,
 And thunder's voice, which wretched mortals fear,
 And winds that on their wings cold winter bear.
 Nor were those blustring brethren left at large,
 On seas, and shores, their fury to discharge:
 Bound as they are, and circumscrib'd in place,
 They rend the world, resistless, where they pass;
 And mighty marks of mischief leave behind;
 Such is the rage of their tempestuous kind.
 First Eurus to the rising morn is sent
 (The regions of the balmy continent);
 And Eastern realms, where early Persians run,
 To greet the blest appearance of the sun.
 Westward, the wanton Zephyr wings his flight;
 Pleas'd with the remnants of departing light:
 Fierce Boreas, with his off-spring, issues forth
 T' invade the frozen waggon of the North.
 While frowning Auster seeks the Southern sphere;
 And rots, with endless rain, th' unwholsom year.
 High o'er the clouds, and empty realms of wind,
 The God a clearer space for Heav'n design'd;
 Where fields of light, and liquid aether flow;
 Purg'd from the pondrous dregs of Earth below.
 Scarce had the Pow'r distinguish'd these, when
 streight
 The stars, no longer overlaid with weight,
 Exert their heads, from underneath the mass;
 And upward shoot, and kindle as they pass,
 And with diffusive light adorn their heav'nly
 place.
 Then, every void of Nature to supply,
 With forms of Gods he fills the vacant sky:
 New herds of beasts he sends, the plains to share:
 New colonies of birds, to people air:
 And to their oozy beds, the finny fish repair.
 A creature of a more exalted kind
 Was wanting yet, and then was Man design'd:
 Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
 For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest:
 Whether with particles of heav'nly fire
 The God of Nature did his soul inspire,
 Or Earth, but new divided from the sky,
 And, pliant, sti