The
Creation
by James Weldon Johnson
And God stepped out on space, and
he looked around and said: I'm lonely--I'll make me a world. And
far as the eye of God could see darkness covered everything,
blacker than a hundred midnights down in a cypress swamp. Then God
smiled, and the light broke, and the darkness rolled up on one
side, and the light stood shining on the other, and God said:
That's good!
Then God reached out and took the
light in His hands, and God rolled the light around in His hands
until He made the sun; and He set that sun a- blazing in the
heavens. And the light that was left from making the sun God
gathered up in a shining ball and flung against the darkness,
spangling the night with the moon and stars. Then down between the
darkness and the light He hurled the world; And God said: That's
good!
Then God himself stepped down--and
the sun was on His right hand, and the moon was on His left; the
stars were clustered about His head, and the earth was under His
feet. And God walked, and where He trod His footsteps hollowed the
valleys out and bulged the mountains up.
Then He stopped and looked and saw that the earth was hot and
barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world and He spat out the
seven seas--He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed--He
clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled--and the waters above
the earth came down, the cooling waters came down. Then the green
grass sprouted, and the little red flowers blossomed, the pine
tree pointed his finger to the sky, and the oak spread out his
arms, the lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground, and the
rivers ran down to the sea; and God smiled again, and the rainbow
appeared, and curled itself around His shoulder. Then God raised
His arm and He waved His hand over the sea and over the land, and
He said: Bring forth! Bring forth! And quicker than God could drop
His hand, Fishes and fowls And beasts and birds swam the rivers
and the seas, roamed the forests and the woods, and split the air
with their wings. And God said: That's good!
Then God walked around, and God
looked around on all that He had made. He looked on His world with
all its living things and God said: I'm lonely still. Then God sat
down--on the side of a hill where He could think;
By a deep, wide river He sat down; with His head in His hands, God
thought and thought, till He thought: I'll make me a man! Up from
the bed of the river God scooped the clay; and by the bank of the
river He kneeled Him down; and there the great God Almighty who
lit the sun and fixed it in the sky who flung the stars to the
most far corner of the night, who rounded the earth in the middle
of His hand, this Great God, like a mammy bending over her baby,
kneeled down in the dust toiling over a lump of clay till He
shaped it in His own image; Then into it He blew the breath of
life, and man became a living soul.
Amen.
Amen. |