University of Virginia Library

Nor was the Flood delayed. Defended still
From popular tumult in a cloudy shrine,
Noah abode, and ready made the Ark,
He, and his Sons.

At length, from Adam's Vale,
Elihu came—‘Thus saith the Eternal’—(thus
Elihu spake)—‘thus saith to Noah now,
Even by me. Come thou, and all thy house
Into the Ark, for righteous thee have I
Before me in this generation seen.
Of every clean beast take thou unto thee
By sevens, male, and female; and of beasts
That are not clean by two, these likewise male,
And female; to keep seed alive upon
The face of all the earth. For yet seven days,
And it I'll cause to rain upon the earth:
Days forty, and nights forty, shall it rain;
And every living substance I have made
Will I destroy from off the face of earth.’

He said; and Noah followed then his steps
Into the Vale of Adam, where yet Ham
Abode, with the creation animal.

Anon, forth of that wilderness they came,
With the inferiour creatures, toward the Ark:
The fierce, and gentle, and the wild, and tame,
With the carnivorous, and those that feed
On herbs, and grasses, both of birds, and beasts,
Insects, and reptiles. First, the Quadrupeds
Came in procession: all that nurture well
Their offspring at the breast, resembling thus,
In structure, and in organs, humankind.
The furred, and maned preceded. Lords of all,
The Lion yellow-maned, majestic brute,
Noble of gesture, regal in his gait,
Came, with the queenly Lioness, ahead
Of the innumerable throng, in pairs—
Conscious of great occasion, proudly shewn.
The lynx-like Caracal, but without spots,
More fierce, and savage both of mien, and mind;
Carnivorous, but weak, and following slow
The Lion, on the fragments ever he
Of his right-royal banquet safely preys:
The Panther and the Jaguar, beautiful
And mighty: the ferocious Ocelot:
The Race Feline, sagacious—fiercest, wildest
Of all the fierce, and wild—passed, with their prey
At peace, in tenderest fellowship, and love.
—Nor was the Mouse, mean creature, yet full oft
Graced with no little elegance of shape,
And stripèd colour, absent; noxious though
To housewife, and to husbandman provoked—
The cautious Mouse, freebooter mild, yet loathed,
Though not unamiable; such the force
Of honest prejudice, no beauty atones
For depredation; none the robber loves.
The Rats too, black or brown, both bold, and fierce,
The granary, barn, and storehouse to assail,
Unnatural, that on each other prey,
Cains of the inferior creatures; and next came
The fox-like Jackalls, hunting in their pack,
Full crying for the chase, a howl so loud,
The forest nobles rouse them at the noise,
And waken at the signal, apt to seize
The timid creatures flying from the yell.

Then came the Race Canine: the Wolf-Dog first;
An intellectual race, docile, and true;
And that Hare-Indian named, a slender sort,
But graceful, and, with light foot, capable
To run unsinking o'er the crusted snow,
In chase of Moose, or Reindeer; with the friend
Of northern hunters, bold, and patient still.
In every nation is the Dog the friend
Of Man, and numberless of breeds as he;
The Bull-Dog, and the Mastiff, and the kind
Who faithful watch their absent masters' wives
Left in their mountain-home, to strangers fierce,
Inimical. The generous graceful Horse—
The Ass, poetic brute, and dignified
With great associations, patient, still,
And humble; free of spirit yet, and dull
Then only when enslaved; and tractable
In servitude, then only obstinate
When man's a tyrant, cruel, and severe:
The stripèd Zebra, wild, and beautiful,
With skin most glossy smooth, with white, and brown,
Varied the male, with black the female streaked:
The Musk-Deer, and the Fallow, and that One
Since found in Ind, the Axis, on the banks
Of Ganges numerous: tender-eyed Gazelle,
Elastic Deer, light-bounding on the hills:
All these, and more, came trooping of the race
Clothed with soft hair, in meet abundance given,
According to the clime, separate in most,
In some united into prickly spines;
—Witness the snake-fed Urchin, that even here
Into a pointed circle self-involved,
Is girt with spinous armour for defence;
And the quill-armed uneasy Porcupine,
Hystrix, and the Arboreal, loving spring,
With the fasciculated, fretful all;
Raising its spires irate, and stamping earth,
In its defensive armour swelling big;—
But flattened on the Manis into sharp
And pointed scales, and to a shelly coat
Upon the Armadillo, strong of claw.

Nor are the bearded, and the whiskered tribe
Here wanting, bristly race. The Ape, and Goat—
The bearded Goat came with the beardless Sheep,
Unhorned, and horned, clad or with wool or hair,
A various race, and gentle; with the Lamb,
Sacred for worship, innocent as love,
Or hope in infancy, and without spot,
Meek creature, blameless martyr, man to save—
The Buffalo, and Bison, larger Ox,
Of forehead broad, and high, with withers huge,
Shaggy with hair, a black and woolly mane,
Short-horned, brief-tailed, short-legged and muscular—
The Wild Ox, and the Zebu, and the Yak,
The Musk Ox, race cornute, and ruminant,
Dew-lapped, robust, yet elegant of form—
The Aurochs, and the Arni. Mild the Cow,
Domestic, useful, yielding of her milk
For human needs. Man's burthens bears full oft
The serviceable Ox, and for man's food
Treads out the corn; ungrateful he who seeks
The brute to muzzle, to such labour tasked.
—Callous of breast, and knee, the timid Hares
Come leaping; and the Camels, desart-born,
And in the desart faithful friends of man:
As long he travels o'er the unbounded waste,
His water-cruise, and scrip half spent, and gone;
His burthen-bearers through the lonely wilds;
—O grief; though by the pang of thirst constrained,
To slay the loved companion of such toils,
For the refreshing stream by nature kept
In wallet at the stomach provident.—
And Llamas ruminant, yet with the hoof
Unparted, like the Camel, and, like him,
Provided against thirst with water-pouch,
Also unhorned, long necked, and small of head,
Mobile of upper lip, and straightly backed;
A rampant race, for precipices formed
To scale, and to descend, wild, bright of eye.
The Otter, found by river, and by lake;
A skilful fisher, for the finny spoil
Avid, and fierce, and nourished by such food;
Or by the sea, a bright, and beauteous thing,
Of polished black, or silvery white of hue:
Parental love its passion, pining oft
To death for loss of offspring, on the spot
Whence it was taken dying. Small the tribe
With it came on. But larger followed now:
The tuskèd Hippopotamus, uncouth
And heavy—slow on land, but, in the flood,
Bold, active, skilful to attack, and sink
Boats on the river, perilous to man;
But not the Deluge might his race survive,
Save in the pair that enter now the Ark:
The Sea-Horse, living both on sea, and land,
On icy island, and in ocean cave;
And Seal, inhabitant of caves, and coasts
By the sea side—a roamer of the deep;
Yet them had Deluge utterly destroyed,
If not protected thus from its dread swoop.

In fellowship, and friendship with their Prey,
Walked the Devourers the smooth plain along,
And up the sacred hill, into the Ark,
Appointed for their rescue by high Heaven.

Then followed the Oviparous broods, egg-sprung—
Solicitude parental needed not:
Of life tenacious—cold, and stern, and harsh,
Of blood, and face and voice, yet mild of deed,
And disposition; dwellers by the sea,
Or in it, rivers, and their banks—the marsh—
The pool—the lovers of the wet, and moist;
The Tortoise, Lizard, and the Crocodile.
Nor fierce, nor cruel, see the Crocodile,
With mouth beyond his ears, enormous gasp,
Dreadful with lipless teeth, with fiery eyes,
Like to the burnished eyelids of the morn,
As if in rage lit up, beneath a brow
Wrinkled in frowns for ever, terrible;
Proud of his scales which close him as a seal,
So near together, air scarce intervenes;
Sporting along the deep, beneath him boil
The waves like to a cauldron, and the sea
Froths as with unguents, while his glowing path
Makes hoary the great waters, wrought with foam.
Yet need it was that from the Deluge storm
He should be rescued, though devoid of fear,
Created to look down exalted things,
And hold high rule—a monarch over all
Children of Pride, who misesteem of God.
A sympathetic race, by hunger wrought
Only to fury; now he glides, in peace,
To refuge from such storm as even he
Might not escape. With him the Lizard race
Came on, both emerald, and of golden hue;
The changeable Chamelion—nor declined
To join the train the pleasing Basilisk,
Or Little King, whose agitated crest,
And crown erect, speak satisfaction, while,
With motion light, he glances, and reflects
Light various coloured from his polished scales.

The Serpent tribe succeed. Nor feet, nor wings,
To them belong; yet nimble as a shaft
Shot from a hunter's bow, they move along
Upon the summits of the highest trees,
And round their trunks, and branches as they come,
Twisting, and then untwisting flexibly,
In rapid sportiveness: of every size
And thickness, but all scaled; yet in the head
A vulnerable race: elastic, strong,
And brilliant both of frame, and hue. Here are
The Serpent of the Sea; the Viper, green,
And yellow; with the Boa, and the Snake;
The Insects, and the Worms. The wingèd Flies,
Gaudy of hues, and varied in their forms,
Swarm in the sunlight, and, as of themselves,
Do make a radiant atmosphere of flowers,
In noiseless motion, the soul's images;
Ants, Bees, and Beetles, Spiders, Wasps, and Gnats,
Not mean, though small, in will as free as gods:
Some luminous with light of life, brief tribe,
In the shut Ark lit up their faery lamps,
Stars of its night, and made it like a heaven,
Beautiful Insects, living but to shine.

The Sloths were there, tree-climbers. Those not saved,
Were glad at first to hear the tempest storm,
And quickened with new life. The winds might blow,
The strong trees bow; the branches did but wave,
And meet to form a pathway for their march:
Till the wild rain subdued them, and o'ertopped
The forests, and the mountains. Saved in vain
The Megatherium, and the Mastodon—
And huger tribes, yet by the Flood o'erthrown;
Hence found in barren tracts, in sand, and ice.
The traveller to the Frozen Ocean bent,
Shall pass o'er mountains high, through valleys deep,
Guided by tiny brooks, and arid plains,
Where not a shrub appears; last to the gulf
Shall come, and in the crystal mass detect
Carcase of Walrus—and soon after trace
The giant Mammoth through the melting ice;
Till, at the length, the plane of its support,
Inclining, let it fall, by its own weight,
Upon a bank of sand—for ages lost,
Discovered only then, perhaps there laid
Embedded since the Deluge which I sing.