IX.
“Have, then, thy wish!”—He whistled shrill,
And he was answer’d from the hill;
Wild as the scream of the curlew,
From crag to crag the signal flew.
Instant, through copse and heath, arose
Bonnets and spears and bended bows;
On right, on left, above, below,
Sprung up at once the lurking foe;
From shingles gray their lances start,
The bracken bush sends forth the dart,
The rushes and the willow wand
Are bristling into ax and brand,
And every tuft of broom gives life
To plaided warrior arm’d for strife.
That whistle garrison’d the glen
At once with full five hundred men,
As if the yawning hill to heaven
A subterranean host had given.
Watching their leader’s beck and will,
All silent there they stood, and still.
Like the loose crags, whose threatening mass
Lay tottering o’er the hollow pass,
As if an infant’s touch could urge
Their headlong passage down the verge,
With step and weapon forward flung,
Upon the mountain side they hung.
The Mountaineer cast glance of pride
Along Benledi’s living side,
Then fix’d his eye and sable brow
Full on Fitz-James—“How say’st thou now?
These are Clan-Alpine’s warriors true;
And, Saxon,—I am Roderick Dhu!”