Oh Aira caespitosa, most stately
and most variable of British grasses, why will you always grow where
you are not wanted? Through you the mare all but left her hind legs
in that last gripe. Through you a red-coat ahead of me, avoiding one
of your hassocks, jumped with his horse's nose full butt against a
fir-stem, and stopped,
'As one that is struck dead
By lightning, ere he falls,'
as we shall soon, in spite of the mare's cleverness. Would we were
out of this!
Out of it we shall be soon. I see daylight ahead at last, bright
between the dark stems. Up a steep slope, and over a bank which is
not very big, but being composed of loose gravel and peat mould,
gives down with me, nearly sending me head over heels in the heather,
and leaving me a sheer gap to scramble through, and out on the open
moor.
Grand old moor! stretching your brown flats right away toward Windsor
for many a mile.--Far to our right is the new Wellington College,
looking stately enough here all alone in the wilderness, in spite of
its two ugly towers and pinched waist.
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