Chapter 4 No.4

The night is broken eastward; is it day,

Or but the watchfires trembling here and there,

Like hopes on memory's devastated way,

In moonless wastes of planet-stricken air?

O many-childed mother great and grey,

O multitudinous bosom, and breasts that bare

Our fathers' generations, whereat lay

The weanling peoples and the tribes that were,

Whose new-born mouths long dead

Those ninefold nipples fed,

Dim face with deathless eyes and withered hair,

Fostress of obscure lands,

Whose multiplying hands

Wove the world's web with divers races fair

And cast it waif-wise on the stream,

The waters of the centuries, where thou sat'st to dream;