Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/244

Graze the seaweed, their pasture, and through groves
Of coral stray, or, sporting with quick glance,
Shew to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold;
Or, in their pearly shells at ease, attend
Moist nutriments; or under rocks their food
In jointed armor watch; on smooth the seal
And bended dolphins play; part, huge of bulk,410
Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait,
Tempest the ocean. There leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, on the deep
Stretched like a promontory, sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land, and at his gills
Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea.
Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fens, and shores,
Their brood as numerous hatch from the egg, that soon,
Bursting with kindly rupture, forth disclose419
Their callow young; but feathered soon and fledge
They summed their pens, and, soaring the air sublime,
With clang despised the ground, under a cloud
In prospect. There the eagle and the stork,
On cliffs and cedar-tops, their eyries build.