Page:Stevenson - Songs of Travel (1896).djvu/89

Rh Competing branches pushed for air.

Green conquerors from overhead

Bestrode the bodies of their dead:

The Caesars of the sylvan field,

Unused to fail, foredoomed to yield:

For in the groins of branches, lo!

The cancers of the orchid grow.

Silent as in the listed ring

Two chartered wrestlers strain and cling;

Dumb as by yellow Hooghly's side

The suffocating captives died;

So hushed the woodland warfare goes

Unceasing; and the silent foes

Grapple and smother, strain and clasp

Without a cry, without a gasp.

Here also sound thy fans, O God,

Here too thy banners move abroad:

Forest and city, sea and shore,

And the whole earth, thy threshing-floor! 73