La Sepmaine is a hexameral poem consisting of seven jours, each containing around 700 lines, devoted to the aspect of the world created on that day in the first week.

Because the poem's structure follows Genesis 1:1-8 closely, it is easy to navigate to particular sections; for example, readers wanting to find what du Bartas writes about cuttlefish or mullet could know to turn to 'Le Cinquiesme Jour' (The Fifth Day) and in most editions would have had marginal annotations to help them locate the description of each creature.

'Le Premier Jour' (the era of Adam) contains 'Eden' (II.i.1) describing the Garden of Paradise; 'L'Imposture' ('The Imposture' in Sylvester's translation, II.i.2) which relates the Fall of Man; 'Les Furies' ('The Furies', II.i.3) which describes the diseases, conflicts and vices that plague mankind; and 'Les Artifices' ('The Handy Crafts', II.i.4) which is about the various crafts that humankind learnt, and Cain and Abel.

'Le Second Jour' (Noah) consists of 'L'Arche' ('The Arke', II.ii.1) retelling the Great Flood; 'Babylone' ('Babylon', II.ii.2) about the Tower of Babel and European literary cultures; 'Les Colonies' ('The Colonies', Ii.ii.3) which describes the spread of different tribes across the world; and 'Les Colomnes' ('The Columnes', II.ii.4) in which the tale (originally found in Josephus) of Seth writing scientific and astronomical knowledge on two pillars to safeguard it against fire and flood is a point of departure for a review of learning in those areas.

James VI of Scotland received a manuscript copy containing six of the eight sections of the Suites (including a version of 'Les Peres' with 830 lines not found in the printed texts) in the late 1580s.

[16] What were once regarded as the stylistic merits of du Bartas' were later deemed to be weaknesses: his use of compound epithets, duplication of initial syllables, frequent inclusion of metaphors and similes and a highly compressed and accumulative style all contributed to a sense that his poetry was over-wrought and over-elaborate.

[17] As late as 1684 Madeleine de Scudéry recalled the often-cited anecdote that Ronsard had once remarked that du Bartas had achieved more in a week than he had in his entire life.

Du Bartas' reputation remained low in subsequent centuries: in 1842 Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve wrote that du Bartas ‘a pu s’égarer et céder au mauvais goût de son temps dans le gros de ces oeuvres’ (‘was led astray and gave into the poor taste of his times in most of his work’).

Though the match never happened, du Bartas remained in high esteem with James: he received expensive gifts on departure, and the King invited him to return.

[23] William Fowler[24] and John Stewart of Baldynneis[25] are two poets who refer to Urania as a symbolic figurehead for the kind of poetic inspiration to which they aspired in vain.

Hadrian Damman's Latin translation was dedicated to James when printed in 1600 (a manuscript copy dated 1596 also survives, National Library of Scotland MS Adv.

[27] A passage in the King's Basilikon Doron exhorting more poets to 'bee well versed' in du Bartas' poetry[28] was cited, for instance, by Thomas Winter in the dedicatory epistle of his translation of the Third Dayes Creation (1604).

Joshua Sylvester dedicated his translation Devine Weekes and Workes (1605) to James, having presented a manuscript extract to the King in the previous year.

Du Bartas was extremely popular in early modern England, and was still being read widely in the later seventeenth century even as his reputation in France began to decline.

S. K. Heninger, reflecting on similarities between Sidney and du Bartas’ conception of poetry, writes that: ‘the reader could ponder the wide-ranging mysteries of creation.

It is also characterized by a Protestant devotion to the word—the word, at once comprehensive and knowable, logos though it may be.’[32] William Scott, author of ‘The Model of Poesy’ and a translator of the first two Days of La Sepmaine, found moral, spiritual and aesthetic value in the poetry of 'our incomparable Bartas, who hath opened as much natural science in one week, containing the story of the creation, as all the rabble of schoolmen and philosophers have done since Plato and Aristotle.

[39] Du Bartas' works, particularly and often exclusively La Sepmaine, were translated into numerous other European languages in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Du Bartas' popularity apparently declined throughout Europe in the eighteenth century: in his translation of Diderot's 'Rameau's Nephew' (1805) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe expressed surprise that La Sepmaine was no longer widely known.