"'
'A whole poem?'
'Why not? How can there be less, if he had eyes to see?'
'Does he fancy that it is an account of a run to tell us that "Found
at * * * * cover, held away at a slapping pace for * * * * Barn, then
turned down the * * * Water for a mile, and crossed the Forest; made
for * * * Hill, but being headed, went by ** ** woods to D * * *
where he was run into after a gallant race of * * * * hours and * * *
*miles"? It is nearly as dull as a history book!'
'Nay, I never rode with those staghounds: and yet I can fill up his
outline for him, wherever the stag was roused. Do you think that he
never marked how the panting cavalcade rose and fell on the huge
mile-long waves of that vast heather sea; how one long brown hill
after another sunk down, greyer and greyer, behind them, and one long
grey hill after another swelled up browner and browner before them;
and how the sandstone rattled and flew beneath their feet, as the
great horses, like Homer's of old, "devoured up the plain;" and how
they struggled down the hill-side, through bushes and rocks, and
broad slipping rattling sheets of screes, and saw beneath them stag
and pack galloping down the shallow glittering river-bed, throwing up
the shingle, striking out the water in long glistening sheets; and
how they too swept after them, down the flat valley, rounding crag
and headland, which opened one after another in interminable vista,
along the narrow strip of sand and rushes, speckled with stunted,
moss-bearded, heather-bedded hawthorns, between the great grim
lifeless mountain walls? Did he feel no pleasant creeping of the
flesh that day at the sound of his own horse-hoofs, as they swept
through the long ling with a sound as soft as the brushing of a
woman's tresses, and then rang down on the spongy, black,
reverberating soil, chipping the honey-laden fragrant heather
blossoms, and tossing them out in a rosy shower? Or, if that were
really too slight a thing for the observation of an average
sportsman, surely he must recollect the dying away of the hounds'
voices, as the woodland passes engulfed them, whether it were Brendon
or at Badger-worthy, or any other place; how they brushed through the
narrow forest paths, where the ashes were already golden, while the
oaks still kept their sombre green, and the red leaves and berries of
the mountain-ash showed bright beneath the dark forest aisles; and
how all of a sudden the wild outcry before them seemed to stop and
concentrate, thrown back, louder and louder as they rode, off the
same echoing crag; till at a sudden turn of the road there stood the
stag beneath them in the stream, his back against the black rock with
its green cushions of dripping velvet, knee-deep in the clear amber
water, the hounds around him, some struggling and swimming in the
deep pool, some rolling and tossing and splashing in a mad, half-
terrified ring, as he reared into the air on his great haunches, with
the sparkling beads running off his red mane, and dropping on his
knees, plunged his antlers down among them, with blows which would
have each brought certain death with it if the yielding water had not
broken the shock.
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