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filled with anguish and with rage. For a further two whole days he listened to the inexorable tide of engines encircle his beautiful world and watched in love and pity the trees put forth their young leaves, the spiders spin their sticky threads, the elvers in the crystal stream lave their slippery ribbons in the current. All was as it ever had been, and all was changed for ever. He alone of those myriad creatures to whom the clearing was the universe knew it and could mourn their end before they ended.
    Then on the third day at dawn the Poet arose and addressed his domain with bitterest tears:
    ‘Is it not I who have brought this down upon you? Is not the fault mine? For at last they have tracked me down, my cold compatriots: they pursue me and my kind even to the uttermost ends of the earth. I took upon myself an exile’s life that I might court the Muse in her natural halls, and even so did she come tome. Where before was silence we have made enduring music; we have wrought marvellous songs. Out of nothing have we spun our webs of words and hung them up to ensnare with gentlest Art the unhappy souls who chance by. We have magnified the beauty of the world whose outward sign Creation is and lo! the hearts of men grow greater in response.
    ‘Now they, those countrymen of mine whose blood is salt with the driven spume of grey and Northern seas, whose hearts are cold with Nonconformist zeal and will not be warmed except before the twin fires of self-righteousness and greed, they have tracked me here so they may lay waste my Soul.’
    And the clearing was hushed as he paused and it seemed as though the uneasy rumble of vile mills had drawn a little closer.
    ‘Is it not I who have brought this down upon you? Oh, my lovely elverines, beloved tabitabi tree, is not the fault mine? My error lay in thinking them indifferent. Yet, though many years have passed, they have not forgotten me, hidden in your midst in populous solitude. What other motive could they have, thus to track me even to Paradise itself and encompass me about with hateful engines? Even now they steadily abolish Nature who for so long has cherished me secretly in her bosom as a pearl in a precious setting. What other motive could they have but vengeance? Is not the world already full enough of Swedish furniture? Lives there a man who would not see a shaggy, ancient hardwood tree stand in living majesty rather than in the office of some executive? Who, looking at such a noble giant, thinks only of a heap of desks? No, the fault is mine, the fault is mine.’
    Thus spake the Poet; and he ceased, weeping. And the clearing heard his words and the forest trembled, for it knew that, although in matters of detail he slightly erred (the logging consortium which had gained the Royal Warrant being, in fact, Japanese), in essence he was accurate and once more spoke a Truth. So the Poet retired to his simple hut heavy-hearted and, with the world’s encroachment ringing in his ears, began his greatest work: an Elegy such as had not been before or since and written as though his very eyes had shed every one of the lacrimae r e rum.
    Meanwhile by devious routes the reputation of this stranger living in the land had reached the ears of the King.
    ‘Seemingly,’ he told his Chamberlain, who had actually brought the news himself a month or two ago, ‘there lives in adistant region of Our Kingdom a Poet with the gift of Truth and Beauty. We find this hard to believe, for such parts are commonly lived in by displaced zoo populations and dreary savages. Wherefore would a Poet seek Beauty and Truth in such a place? Nevertheless, it is Our wish and Our command that a poem from this man’s pen be brought that We may judge with Our own eyes the truth of these astounding claims. Selah’ (which, being interpreted from the language of that land, means ‘Hurry’).
    But the Chamberlain groaned inwardly; for, although it was his pleasure and his pride to do his Monarch’s bidding, he