Midnight at noon, and chill, damp horror reign’d
  O’er dead, fall’n leaves and slimy funguses;
  —­Reptiles were quicken’d into various birth. 
  Loathsome, unsightly, swoln to obscene bulk,
  Lurk’d the dark toad beneath the infected turf;
  The slow-worm crawl’d, the light cameleon climb’d,
  And changed his colour as his pace he changed;
  The nimble lizard ran from bough to bough,
  Glancing through light, in shadow disappearing;
  The scorpion, many-eyed, with sting of fire,
  Bred there,—­the legion-fiend of creeping things;
  Terribly beautiful, the serpent lay,
  Wreath’d like a coronet of gold and jewels,
  Fit for a tyrant’s brow; anon he flew
  Straight as an arrow shot from his own rings,
  And struck his victim, shrieking ere it went
  Down his strain’d throat, that open sepulchre. 
  Amphibious monsters haunted the lagoon;
  The hippopotamus, amidst the flood,
  Flexile and active as the smallest swimmer;
  But on the bank, ill balanced and infirm,
  He grazed the herbage, with huge, head declined,
  Or lean’d to rest against some ancient tree. 
  The crocodile, the dragon of the waters,
  In iron panoply, fell as the plague,
  And merciless as famine, cranch’d his prey,
  While, from his jaws, with dreadful fangs all serried,
  The life-blood dyed the waves with deadly streams. 
  The seal and the sea-lion, from the gulf
  Came forth, and couching with their little ones. 
  Slept on the shelving rocks that girt the shores,
  Securing prompt retreat from sudden danger;
  The pregnant turtle, stealing out at eve,
  With anxious eye, and trembling heart, explored
  The loneliest coves, and in the loose warm sand
  Deposited her eggs, which the sun hatch’d: 
  Hence the young brood, that never knew a parent,
  Unburrow’d and by instinct sought the sea;
  Nature herself, with her own gentle hand,
  Dropping them one by one into the flood,
  And laughing to behold their antic joy,
  When launch’d in their maternal element. 
  The vision of that brooding world went on;
  Millions of beings yet more admirable
  Than all that went before them now appear’d;
  Flocking from every point of heaven, and filling
  Eye, ear, and mind, with objects, sounds, emotions
  Akin to livelier sympathy and love
  Than reptiles, fishes, insects, could inspire;
  —­Birds, the free tenants of land, air, and ocean,
  Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace;
  In plumage delicate and beautiful,
  Thick without burthen, close as fishes’ scales,
  Or loose as full-blown poppies to the breeze;
  With wings that might have had a soul within them,
  They bore their owners by such sweet enchantment;
  —­Birds, small and great, of endless shapes and colours,
  Here flew and perch’d, there swam and dived at pleasure;
  Watchful and agile, uttering voices wild