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FROM CHAOS TO COSMOS
I.
Swathes of solid darkness shroudedChaos on a world destroy'd;
God, the quickening Spirit, brooded
O'er the lifeless formless void.
Hark! the lone creative word
Startles darkness from his sleep;
Light, attendant on her Lord,
Glimmers on the frozen deep.
Darkness from his station hurl'd,
Lo, revealed a ruined world!
II.
Vapours from the waste ascendingDim the rays that bade them rise,
And, close round the surface bending,
Seek not yet the vacant skies.
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Breathes the all-essential air,
Heaven his widening wings expands,
They the buoyant clouds upbear.
Rushing now from pole to pole
Tempests roar and billows roll!
III.
Now the loud-usurping oceanTramples on the subject-shore;
Sudden shrinks his swelling motion
Backward with retreating roar.
Hark! the Voice assigns his bed
And confines his restless reign;
Earth uplifts her dripping head,
Moist emerging from the main.
Lo, what greenness girds the sea,
Waving field, and fruitful tree!
IV.
Light not yet revealed her fountain,White-wing'd herald, wander'd far;
Night, lone on her dusky mountain,
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Hark! again the Word of might!
—Kindling 'neath its Maker's eye,
Circling grandly into sight,
Lo! where morning scales the sky!
Day revolves to whence he rose,—
Lo! all ether throbs and glows!
V.
And the sea its stores provided,And the groves as gardens grew,
But no fin the wave divided,
And the sky no tenant knew.
Hark! the Word:—The waters teem,
Life upleaps, a various throng;
Plumes athwart the sunshine gleam,
And the woods resound with song!
Fish and fowl in sea and sky
Play and pipe and multiply!
VI.
As the glorious consummationOf creative power draws nigh,
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Bend on earth a wondering eye.
Lo! while myriads round him spring
From the opening cells of earth,
Man appears, creation's king,
Godlike from his humble birth!
Then the empyréan rang
And the Sons of Morning sang!
1870.
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