Leopold rephrases his concept of the land ethic, this time as a literary allusion. He references contemporary poet E. A. Robinson’s long poem Tristram, about a knight of the Arthurian round table. Leopold quotes Robinson, who himself had developed a kind of preliminary land ethic — the idea that people should do their best not to alter the world for the worse. Even a King is not the conqueror of the land, but a member of the greater biotic community. Each and every biotic citizen has a duty to the natural world. When presented with the opportunity to rule…