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
The creatures will not let me see
The great creator of them all;
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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