  Do you happen to know in Ross-shire Mount Ben ... but the name scarce matters: Of the naked fact I am sure enough, Though I clothe it in rags and tatters. You may recognise Ben by description; Behind him—a moor’s immenseness: Up goes the middle mount of a range, Fringed with its firs in denseness. Rimming the edge, its fir-fringe, mind! For an edge there is, though narrow; From end to end of the range, a strip Of path runs straight as an arrow. And the mountaineer who takes that path Saves himself miles of journey He has to plod if he crosses the moor Through heather, peat, and burnie. But a mountaineer he needs must be, For, look you, right in the middle Projects bluff Ben—with an end in ich— Why planted there, is a riddle: Since all Ben’s brothers little and big Keep rank, set shoulder to shoulder, And only this burliest out must bulge Till it seems—to the beholder From down in the gully,—as if Ben’s breast, To a sudden spike diminished, Would signify to the boldest foot “All further passage finished!” Yet the mountaineer who sidles on And on to the very bending, Discovers, if heart and brain be proof, No necessary ending. Foot up, foot down, to the turn abrupt Having trod, he, there arriving, Finds—what he took for a point was breadth A mercy of Nature’s contriving. So, he rounds what, when ’tis reached, proves straight, From one side gains the other: The wee path widens—resume the march, And he foils you, Ben my brother! But Donald—(that name, I hope, will do)— I wrong him if I call “foiling” The tramp of the callant, whistling the while As blithe as our kettle’s boiling. He had dared the danger from boyhood up, And now,—when perchance was waiting A lass at the brig below,—’twixt mount And moor would he standing debating? Moreover this Donald was twenty-five, A glory of bone and muscle: Did a fiend dispute the right of way, Donald would try a tussle. Lightsomely marched he out of the broad On to the narrow and narrow; A step more, rounding the angular rock, Reached the front straight as an arrow. He stepped it, safe on the ledge he stood, When—whom found he full-facing? What fellow in courage and wariness too, Had scouted ignoble pacing, And left low safety to timid mates, And made for the dread dear danger, And gained the height where—who could guess He would meet with a rival ranger? ’Twas a gold-red stag that stood and stared, Gigantic and magnific, By the wonder—ay, and the peril—struck Intelligent and pacific: For a red deer is no fallow deer Grown cowardly through park-feeding; He batters you like a thunderbolt If you brave his haunts unheeding. I doubt he could hardly perform volte-face Had valour advised discretion: You may walk on a rope, but to turn on a rope No Blondin makes profession. Yet Donald must turn, would pride permit, Though pride ill brooks retiring: Each eyed each—mute man, motionless beast— Less fearing than admiring. These are the moments when quite new sense, To meet some need as novel, Springs up in the brain: it inspired resource: —“Nor advance nor retreat but—grovel!” And slowly, surely, never a whit Relaxing the steady tension Of eye-stare which binds man to beast,— By an inch and inch declension, Sank Donald sidewise down and down: Till flat, breast upwards, lying At his six-foot length, no corpse more still, —“If he cross me! The trick’s worth trying.” Minutes were an eternity; But a new sense was created In the stag’s brain too; he resolves! Slow, sure, With eye-stare unabated, Feelingly he extends a foot Which tastes the way ere it touches Earth’s solid and just escapes man’s soft, Nor hold of the same unclutches Till its fellow foot, light as a feather whisk, Lands itself no less finely: So a mother removes a fly from the face Of her babe asleep supinely. And now ’tis the haunch and hind-foot’s turn —That’s hard: can the beast quite raise it? Yes, traversing half the prostrate length, His hoof-tip does not graze it. Just one more lift! But Donald, you see, Was sportsman first, man after: A fancy lightened his caution through, —He wellnigh broke into laughter: “It were nothing short of a miracle! Unrivalled, unexampled— All sporting feats with this feat matched Were down and dead and trampled!” “AND FULL IN THE FACE OF ITS OWNER FLUNG THE GLOVE.” |
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