Graves is a man battling his conscience. For some people the choice between good and/or evil is a fairly easy one. Be just or be foul with occasional acts outside your nature. For many it's not even a choice - it simply is.
Yet for some like Graves it is a decision that cannot be made. These individuals wrestle with the dark and light sides respectively. They walk a fine line all through their lives.
For some it is troubling, creating cantakorous folks who often keep to themselves. For others it becomes a bridge. They walk over it carrying empathy and sympathy enabling them to maintain their middling status - not acheiving great good or evil, but still being able to connect with others.
The swan appears in many of the legends and traditions of Wales, and in the fairy-lore the bird is very prominent.
An old Welsh story describes the eggs of the swan as being hatched by thunder and lightning, and, in common with other nationalities, the people believed that the bird sang its own dirge.
A swan's egg - because of its rarity, perhaps - was a lucky thing to be kept in the house.
A curiosity of this kind was carefully kept in the family of a Welsh farmer, who said the specimen was about two hundred years old. If ever it was shattered, all the freehold property of the family would pass into other hands. This actually happened in 1850, and the prediction was fulfilled.
It was unlucky to see a wild swan alighting in any person's garden, for it meant disaster to a member of the family. A wild swan flying hurriedly inland alone promised sad tidings from the sea. If wild swans flew in flocks inland, wrecks of numerous and costly ships were to be expected.
Witchgrass, a summer annual, is hairy, bushy, and branched from the base. Seedlings resemble those of crabgrass but have longer silky hairs with swollen bases. Mature plants are 1 to 2 feet tall. Leaves are 1/4 to 1/2 inch (6 to 12 mm) broad with fringed ligules and no auricles. The large, open panicled inflorescence has spikelets that each bear a solitary seed at the tip of a branch. Other common names for this weed include tumbleweedgrass, witches hair and moussell.
Other names similar (some sources were conflicting):
Panicum capillare
Agropyron repens (L.) Beauvois