Page:Stevenson - Songs of Travel (1896).djvu/87

Rh Than clutch the earth and seek the blue.

'Mid vegetable king and priest

And stripling, I (the only beast)

Was at the beast's work, killing; hewed

The stubborn roots across, bestrewed

The glebe with the dislustred leaves,

And bade the saplings fall in sheaves;

Bursting across the tangled math

A ruin that I called a path,

A Golgotha that, later on,

When rains had watered, and suns shone,

And seeds enriched the place, should bear

And be called garden. Here and there,

I spied and plucked by the green hair

A fog more resolute to live,

The toothed and killing sensitive.

He, semi-conscious, fled the attack;

He shrank and tucked his branches back;

And straining by his anchor-strand, 71