“Brother, that time is distant--far away, When Heaven or Earth or living thing was not, Save our great God, Cawtantowit, who lay Extended through immensity, where naught But shoreless waters were--and dead were they; No living thing did on their bosom float, And silentness the boundless space did fill; For the Great Spirit slept--and all was still. XII. “But though he slept, yet, as the human soul To this small frame, his being did pervade The universal space, and ruled the whole; E’en as the soul, when in deep slumber laid, Doth her wild dreams and fantasies control, And give them action, color, shape and shade Just as she wills. But the Great Spirit broke His sleep at last, and all the boundless shook. XIII. “In a vast eagle’s form embodied, He Did o’er the deep on outstretched pinions spring; Fire in his eye lit all immensity, Whilst his majestically gliding wing Trembled hoarse thunders to the shuddering sea; And, through their utmost limit quivering, The conscious waters felt their Manittoo, And life, at once, their deepest regions knew. XIV. “The mountain whale came spouting from below, The porpoise plunged along the foaming main, The smaller fry in sporting myriads go, With glancing backs above the liquid plain; Yet still refused her giant form to show-- Ay, sullenly below did yet remain Earth-bearing Tortoise, the _Unamis_ vast, And o’er her still the loftly billows past. XV. “Then great Cawtantowit in his anger spoke, And from his flaming eyes the lightnings past, And from his wings the tenfold thunders broke. The sullen Tortoise heard his words at last-- And slowly she her rocky grasp forsook, And her huge back of woods and mountains vast From the far depths tow’rd upper light began Slowly to heave.--The affrighted waters ran XVI. “Hither and thither, tumultous and far; But still Unamis, heaving from below The full formed earth, first, through the waves did rear The fast sky-climbing Alleghany’s brow, Dark, huge and craggy; from its summits bare The rolling billows fell, and rising now, All its broad forest to the breezy air Came out of Ocean, and, from verdure fair, XVII. “Shed the salt showers. Far o’er the deep, Hills after hills still lift their clustered trees, Wild down the rising slopes the waters leap, Then from the up-surging plain the ocean flees, Till lifted from the flood, in vale and steep And rock, and forest waving to the breeze, Earth, on the Tortoise borne, frowned ocean o’er, And spurned the billows from her thundering shore. XVIII.