Creation A Poem Author:William Ball Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CREATION. BOOK II. Progress of the Creation—The Superhuman world—Angels—Sylphs —Elves—Fays—Genii—Gnomes. CREATION. Book n. Now paused the labour h... more »uge; around The grand Artificer upon all gazed, And stayed his untired hand inoperant: All roll'd within his ken unlimited; He saw that all was good: he saw and smiled, And, at the joy celestial, nature thrilled With a new travail raptured and replete. In burning circles undulating wide, Hotter than Equinoctial noon, far moved A wand'ring glory, faint and pale reflex Of the Creator's gladness : first diffused, t It gathers into shapes of solid light, Robed with Heaven's beauty, marvellous and grand; TV immediate ministers of power divine. ,. Child of the dust, I cannot rise to them, Nor tell their virtues supereminent. .- Next, shorn of half its force, and light and heat, In slighter moulds confined, inferior forms It generates of ambient spirits high; Seraphs and angels named in earthly phrase. Nor these can fancy picture, nor the eye ' . Of the rapt poet see ; far, far, away - f In mansions wonderful, they live alone, In difference immense and distance lost. Next, fables tell, that, downward trav'lling wide, The weak'ning power, then wrought the num'rous hordes Of superlunar sprites, diverse in sex The first, and, in descending scale, to know Communicated joys of thoughtful love : The ray divine now mixed with ether pure, A substance fair and bright, indeed, but still, Changeful, and subject to decay, with which The taste of imperfection first begins. Not as in higher natures are their hearts All fixed on Him, the lonely and the true The undeceiving and unfailing One ; But gently drawn aside by ties of kind, Whence each is link'd to each; none stand apar...« less