Page:The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vailima Edition, Volume 8, 1922.djvu/576

NEW POEMS Where are now the country lovers whom you trembled to be near—

Who, with shy advances, in the falling eventide,

Grasped thee tighter at your fingers, whispered lowlier in your ear,

On a green beside the river ere you died?

All the sweet old country dancers who went round with you in tune,

Dancing, flushed and silent, in the silent eventide,

All departed by enchantment at the rising of the moon

From the green beside the river when you died.

CXC

ND thorns, but did the sculptor spare

Sharp steel upon the marble, ere,

After long vigils and much care

And cruel discipline of blows,

From the dead stone the statue rose?

Think you I grudge the seed, who see

Broad armed the consummated tree?

Or would go back if it might be

To some old geologic time

With Saurians wallowing in fat slime,

Before the rivers and the rains

Had fashioned, and made fair with Plains 562