Fell a hideous rain.
Below, the people left their games
To shelter 'neath steel umbrellas.
Some blew inside out,
The shelters with them
While the storm raged on,
Puddling the city streets with blood.
And the stench of death
Rose thickly heavenward,
Mingling with the breath
Of brave young men in aeroplanes.
--Martin Sandberg, Scattered Seed
Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend
Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while,
Pondering his voyage...
--John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II
