Now is the midnight of the nations : dark

Even as death, beside her blood-dark seas, Earth, Hke a mother in birth agonies. Screams in her travail, and the planets hark Her million-throated terror. Naked, stark, Her torso writhes enormous, and her knees Shudder against the shadowed Pleiades, Wrenching the night's imponderable arc.

Christ ! What shall be delivered to the morn Out of these pangs, if ever indeed another Morn shall succeed this night, or this vast mother Survive to know the blood-spent offspring, torn From her racked flesh ? — What splendor from the

smother ? What new-wing'd world, or mangled god still-born?

— Percy MacKaye.

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