Identify the work and author from the following first lines:

The Volcano that had reared Taratua up from the Pacific depths had been sleeping now for half a million years. Yet in a little while, thought Reinhold, the island would be bathed in fires fiercer than any that had attended its birth.

Arthur C. Clarke. Childhood's End.

One of m all time favorites. one tha taught me to take the long view, but to remember to enjoy what I saw leading up to the end.