Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/44

 the eighteenth century John Stevenson, in finding in Nature, or in Nature's creatures, God the Creator. The closing stanzas show his passionate desire for such consummation, but the poem as a whole does not follow the Hebraic attitude, adopted by Christianity, of perceiving God in his works. Stevenson distinctly states how difficult it is with him; how

and the poem reveals the quandary of one caught up in religious yearning, who is yet preeminently a Pagan in his devotion to Nature in itself. The very title suggests the duality of the young Stevenson's mental struggle, the "well-head" being both the natural source of physical waters, and the divine source of life's spiritual stream.

THE WELL-HEAD

The withered rushes made a flame

Across the marsh of rusty red;

The dreary plover ever came

And sang above the old well-head.

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