Explore "False Dawn" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
To-night God knows what thing shall tide, / The Earth is racked and faint -- / Expectant, sleepless, open-eyed; / And we, who from the Earth were made, / Thrill with our Mother's pain. / In Durance.
No man will ever know the exact truth of this story; though women may sometimes whisper it to one another after a dance, when they are putting up their hair for the night and comparing lists of victims. A man, of course, cannot assist at these functions. So the tale must be told from the outside -- in the dark -- all wrong.