/lit/ - Literature

England once was full of trees,
thick woods from shore to shore.
Nowhere to stand and feel the breeze
from meadow or from moor.

But one by one each ancient bough
felt the axe's savage blow.
For man had need of pyre and prow
and ground on which to sow.

A hundred generations passed.
A billion axeheads fell.
Thus man did make the moorlands vast
and the grassy meadow dell.

On what great shoulders we are borne,
how fleeting is our age.
How tall the book from which is torn,
our single meagre page.