The Judgement of the Flood :: :: University of Virginia Library

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

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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—

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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—

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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

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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

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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;

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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.

Then came the Birds that fly, perch, walk, or swim:
For each hath on the globe its proper site.
Highest in air the Birds of Prey upsoar,
On trees the Insessorial station hold,
Midway 'twixt air, and earth; on earth itself
The Gallinaceous tribes nest, feed, and walk,
Their wings for flight unsuited; fens among

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And marshes, haunt the Waders; and on brook
And lake and river float the Swimmer race:
All these are here; for even the ocean brood
Flood would destroy, and shipwreck of a world.
All these, according to their several kinds,
Their classes, orders, and their families.

The Condor, and the Vulture Californ,
Both large of bulk; one caruncled of beak,
And void of comb, but both with ruff of down,
Female, and male, about the neck ornate.
Dwellers in air upon the peak of snow;
Nor from such height descending save brought down
By hunger; when with beak, and talons they
Subdue their victim, next to banquet fall,
Till gorged, their wings avail not for the flight,
Then on them comes the hunter, and with ease,
Surprising with the lasso, them secures.

The Caracarra, darkly beautiful,
And dignified of walk; inhabitant
Of tree, and bush, and preying upon all;
Also the Vulturine, of attitude
Erect, like eagles, in their prime of pride.
—The gorgeous Harpy, short of wing, robust
Of leg, and strong of beak, and talons curved,
To prey on larger kinds, a crested bird,
Imperial but ferocious, sternly wild,
Boldly destructive, fearing not or man,
Or beast; but rare, else with tremendous power
'Twould rule alone—even as it loves to live,
Far in the solitary depth, and gloom
Of thickest forests, perched on tree aloft,
In voiceless, and in motionless repose—
Sans rival, or sans subject, species sole.

The Owl—the snowy Owl—nocturnal bird,
Untufted, small of ear, and large of eye;
Hairy of leg even to the very claw;

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Of plumage soft, close, thick; meet armour warm
For arctic region, burying even the beak
Within the feathery disks: the Eagle-Owl,
Plumèd of head, with beak, and back, and leg,
Covered with plumage, sable-fawn of hue;
Singular bird, and lover of the dark,
By day in dusk, and solitary place
Retires he, waiting twilight, silent perched,
In all the unconscious gravity of sleep,
The type of Wisdom. Him thus sadly set
The smaller birds attack, in hate, or sport,
With wanton insult: teazed, but not awaked,
About his dusk retreat the dreaming Owl
Shuffles from spot to spot, or standing fixed,
His plumage ruffles, changes attitude,
Grotesque display: meanwhile his opening eyes,
And shutting, mirth provoke; yet then his beak,
Hissing, or clattering, would premonish well
Of wrath reserved for sunset, when, with eye
And ear capacious to detect slight sound
Of rustling leaf, or herbage, he wings forth
On the poor bird retiring to its nest,
Or tiny creature to its burrow bound.
Stern, and terrific, in the wilderness,
His sudden shout by moonlight, to the lone
Traveller benighted there, from slumber roused,
Startled with screams, suppressed, and suffocate.
Of humbler grade the Barn-Owl, friend of man,
Defence of cornfield, and of granary
From rodent swarms: but now in mutual peace
With their small prey. And these, even with the Fowl
The farmer would protect, come on in groups
Associate, nor unaccompanied
With household feelings to the poet dear.

The Linnet, and the Finch; and chief, that One
Gorgeous of lengthened tail, and bright of hue:

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The Starling, Hornbill, and the Humming-Bird:
The Blackbird, and the Crows, with bill prolonged;
The Toucan, broad as well—a feathered sylph;
The Cockatoos, with rose crest falling back,
Or sulphur upward curved, of plumage white;
And the Macaws, all hues: the Parrot tribe
Magnificent, Bird-Monkies, but with voice
Human sometimes, in mockery of speech:
The Meleagris beautifully wild,
Increasing in its splendour with its years—
Strutting it came, obstreperous in pomp,
Of self-importance full. The gorgeous Fowl,
Whose plumage in a tropic sun presents
An orb of many colours, and his crest
A jewellery tiara, blue, and green,
Crowning the gracefullest of crownèd heads:
The Bird of Gold, with long and archèd tail,
Varied with scarlet, white, and dusky brown,
A princely bird: the Silver Pheasant, too,
A hardier race, though elegant of form,
And hue, and attitude; also the kind
With ring-encircled neck. With them came on
The Crested Partridge, the Raloul, and Grous,
With Tinamous, and Francolins, and Quails,
A graceful brood, and various. There too were
The Plaintive Turtles, of Love's Queen loved Birds—
Aye-coupled, ever-wooing, ever-wed;
Heard in the season of that pleasant time,
When the birds sing, and flowers appear on earth,
And puts the fig-tree forth her verdant figs,
And with the tender grape the vines are fragrant,
The winter past, the rain all gone, and over:
The Pigeon, bearer of the word of man,
Epistolary, through the air afar,
And specially renowned for all who love
The story of the Deluge, as 'twas sung

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By Musah, the great poet, skilled in lore
Of Mitzraim, leader thence of Israel
Through Sea, and Cloud unto the promised land.
Thrice Noah sent the Pigeon from the Ark
He enters now; the second time she found
Rest for her sole; but to the Patriarch brought
The branch of olive back—then Noah knew
The waters were abated from the earth;
Hence seven days after, when he let her free,
No more returned, she made the air her home.

The scarlet Ibis, mythologic bird,
And sacred, with its slender long-arched bill
And scalèd legs, and plumage brilliant, walked,
Inviting worship by its stateliness:
The Anser, whose migrations shall invade
The silent desolation of the pole,
Countries unknown, by icy barriers shut
From human vision; with the queenly Swan,
Pure white, and sable both, and tame, and wild;
And Cereopsis, and the humbler Duck,
Yet beautiful full oft, with hues of green,
And violet, and brown, with ornament
Of crescent, and of undulating lines,
Embellished on the neck, and breasts, and cheeks.

Birds of all climes—both of the East, and West—
Of England, native land. Birds of the air
I breathe; sweet are ye, and I raise, like you,
Both morn, and even, hallelujahs high,
That ye found rescue once, and were restored
To hymn the Highest, in the ear of man,
Singing your guileless loves, from death redeemed.
Dear birds of England, of her woods, and groves,
Her fields, and running rivers, hills, and vales,
Streamlets, and brooks. The Blackbird, largest kind,
Of all thy Birds of Song, my native land;
Whose notes are out before the leaves, and woo

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His partner to embraces, ere the frost
Has melted from the fields, and boast his young
Even in the March-wind's eye. The Song-thrush next,
No summer bird alone, he winter charms:
The Missel-Bird, the Red-wing, and that One
Who builds on heaths: the Starling, hardy tribe;
The docile Bullfinch; both of human words
Articulant: the Goldfinch, gay of hue;
The lavish Chaffinch, and the Greenfinch strong:
The Linnet sweet, and curious in his lay;
The Twite, a sojourner, all mirth, and glee;
The Sky-Lark, who builds deepest, highest soars,
And sings as he upward flies; the Wood-Lark, too,
The rival of the Nightingale; and thou,
O Nightingale, wert there, whom, as a type
Of my sage theme, these epic numbers oft
Have honourably mentioned. Thou wert, too,
Saved in the Ark, and, with the Wood-Lark, triedst
Thy skill; while Noah listened, and his Sons,
And Chavah, and her Daughters, to the strife.
Also were there sweet birds of humbler type:
The Titlark, finely feathered, and the free
Redbreast, familiar, shrill of melody;
The Redpole, winter race, and emigrant;
The small Redstart, and shy; the common Wren,
A tiny minstrel, high, and bold of song;
The Yellow-Hammer, and the Reed-Sparrow;
And he who haunts the hedges: and the Bird
That comes in barley-seed-time, and departs
In Spring—brief visitant unto the land
I love; even like this song of mine, which now
The present for the past must quit again,
And England leave for Eden.

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Thus into
The Ark were entered Bird and Beast; nor lacked
The Phœnix, bird of ages; nor, I ween
That wondrous Hippogriff, whom antient fame
Spake near the sources of the ocean born,
Straight leaving earth for heaven, or dwelling on
The mount, he smote with his impatient foot,
That raised the Hippocrene; thereafter he,
Bellerophon cast off, soared to the skies,
By Jove among the constellations placed.
Well ween I the poetic animal
Stayed not behind, but in the mystic Ark,
Bare heavenly Fancies on his wingèd back,
Divinely moving to the sound of song;
A sacred courser, taught there, and preserved
For such, among the future race of men,
As with ambitious soul would visit heaven,
And bring therefrom celestial airs to earth,
For human voices to repeat enrapt.
And while the heart of man was thus poured forth,
Spirit divine upon the Cherubim
Descended glorious, and his mind became
The chariot of its God. And so was sung,
Not uninspired, the harmony which kept
The kinds now reconciled in bands of love,
Link joined on link, throughout the wonderous chain
Of regular gradation, shading oft
Resemblance into difference, multitudes,
And tribes of animals, diverse of shape,
But beauteous all to the instructed eye;
Nor was forgotten that prophetic time,
When Eden's peace shall reign once more on earth,
And the meek Lamb with the fierce Wolf repose,
The Lion, and the Leopard, and the Kid;
—But still the dust shall be the Serpent's meat.

Straight from the wilderness, whence hand Divine

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Led Man to Eden, and along the Vale
Of Armon, and across the common plain,
Even to the Mount of Paradise, defiled
The Living Circle, infinite degrees—
From the most perfect of all animals,
The articulated, sensible of nerve,
Strong, persevering, swift, and diligent,
Docile, long-living, various in pursuit,
Sagacious for set ends, to such as are
But as self-moving plants, whose lowest groups
Pass to the vegetable kinds, immersed
In mass insentient. Hence, into itself
The living circle upward aye returns:
White-blooded race compact of scattered parts,
Threaded with nerves together, gifted but
To taste—to touch—to see; and the clothed tribes
That, having no distinction in the sense,
Breathe yet, and concentrate a nervous mass,
And circulate the blood; the groups affine
Of vertebrated life, that bodily
Connects the inferiour Animal with Man.

Such was the long array: a throng so huge,
That, passing from yon Antre to the Ark,
Where they were safely stalled, from morn to eve,
From earliest morn to latest eve, seven days
They took in their progression. Such the time
Was granted, that the wicked might be warned,
Even on the eve of Judgement, if they would.
—And now the inferiour creatures all have passed
Into the place of refuge. But proud man
Seeks none in his repentance, doomed to die.

And thus within the Ark was furnished all;
Not only ranged the race of animals,
According to their kinds, but Enoch's Book
Had Shem deposited, rightly preserved
For the instruction of the World restored;

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And Japhet of his art the workmanship
Contributed, for ornament, those forms
Prophetic, by his God-directed hand
Sculptured.—Sage Brouma, of the mystic line
Of Magog, who Japetan energy
Inherited, and over Asia
Carried successful arms, and over Ind
Diffused the arts; of doctrine authour he
Braminical, and Scythian creeds, and rites
Of wise mythology o'er Egypt spread,
Phœnicia, Greece, and Asian continent;
That group symbolic, too, which shewed the Roman,
Brave son of Japhet's race, victorious o'er
The servile seed of Canaan, realm of slaves;
Their petty princes, from the earliest time,
The tributary vassals of the land
And monarchy of old Assyria,
From Asshur sprung, the second son of Shem.
In later ages, fled the Canaanite
From Joshua's conquering arms; the remnant left,
Expelled by David, were in Africa
Found of the she-wolf's foundlings, vanquished soon,
And to their sway subdued. There, too, was he,
Great Alexander, Victor of the East,
Who made encroachment on the lines of Shem—
By Aristotle taught, the sage on whom
Thy mantle, Plato, fell, but worn reversed.
Yet peaceful meaning had the oracle,
No less than warlike, by its prophecy
Of Japhet's dwelling in the tents of Shem.
This Portugal, this England, Holland, France
May witness; Japhet's race, part settled now
In Ind, and bringing there to realms once dark
The light of Truth. And Commerce vouches, too,
The passage by the Cape to orient climes,
And by thy straits, Magellan. Crowning all

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The figure of Messiah, central form,
Gave meaning to the statues, and the Ark
Made radiant with the glory of his brow.
But all were beautiful, and when released
From that their place of refuge, and beheld
By the new world, with admiration smote
Hearts, who their purpose understood but ill,
And bent to worship blind religious zeal,
That soon to mere idolatry declined.
—So in abuse corrupt the best of things,
Their origin forgotten; and, abased,
Conduce to foreign ends, and evil aims.

The Hedge-Sparrow.

The Aberdivine, called in Sussex the Barley Bird.