Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/175

 LA SOURCE

(PORT-AU-PRINCE)

the mountain roadside near,

Wherefrom the cliff that rose behind

Kept back, through all the tropic year,

The sundrouth and the whirling wind:

These here could never entrance find;

Perpetual summer balm it knew;

And skyward, thick-set boughs entwined

Their coil, where birds made sweet ado,

And heaven through glossy leaves was deepest blue.

Twin relics of some forest grim,

The last of their primeval race

Left scatheless, knit them limb with limb

Above the reaches of that place;

Time's hand against their high embrace

For seeming centuries had striven,

But yet they grappled face to face, 155