© James Jacques Joseph Tissot, The Creation, c. 1896-1902

Over all the face of Earth by John Milton

From Paradise Lost, Book VII

Fermented the great mother to conceive,

Into one place, and let dry land appear.
Immediately the mountains huge appear

So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low
Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep,

As drops on dust conglobing from the dry:
Part rise in crystal wall, or ridge direct,

Of trumpet, for of armies thou hast heard,
Troop to their standard; so the wat’ry throng,

Soft-ebbing; nor withstood them rock or hill;
But they, or under ground, or circuit wide

Easy, ere God had bid the ground be dry,
All but within those banks, where rivers now

The dry land, Earth; and the great receptacle
Of congregated waters, He called Seas.

Poem Attribution © John Milton, Over all the face of Earth, (From…