Vast Chaos, of eld, was God's dominion,
'Twas His beloved child, His own first born;
And He was aged ere the thought of morn
Shook the sheer steeps of dim Oblivion.
Then all the works of darkness being done
Through countless aeons hopelessly forlorn,
Out to the very utmost verge and bourne,
God at the last, reluctant, made the sun.
He loved His darkness still, for it was old;
He grieved to see His eldest child take flight;
And when His Fiat Lux the death-knell tolled,
As the doomed Darkness backward by Him rolled,
He snatched a remnant flying into light
And strewed it with the stars, and called it Night.

Lloyd Mifflin [1846-1921]