With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.

Then, every void of nature to supply,
With forms of gods Jove fills the vacant sky;
New herds of beasts sends the plains to share;
New colonies of birds to people air;
And to their cozy beds the finny fish repair.
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man designed;
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire formed and fit to rule the rest;
Whether with particles of heavenly fire
The God of nature did his soul inspire,
Or earth, but new divided from the sky,
And pliant, still retained the ethereal energy.
Thus while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.


FOUR AGES OF MAN.

The poet now describes the Ages, or various epochs in the
civilization of the human race. The first is the Golden Age, a
period of patriarchal simplicity, when Earth yielded her fruits
spontaneously, and spring was eternal.

The GOLDEN AGE was first, when man, yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew,