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!”
The last of the legs as tenderly
Follows the rest: or never
Or now is the time! His knife in reach,
And his right hand loose—how clever!
For this can stab up the stomach’s soft,
While the left hand grasps the pastern.
A rise on the elbow, and—now’s the time
Or never: this turn’s the last turn!
I shall dare to place myself by God
Who scanned—for he does—each feature
Of the face thrown up in appeal to him
By the agonising creature.
Nay, I hear plain words: “Thy gift brings this!”
Up he sprang, back he staggered,
Over he fell, and with him our friend
—At following game no laggard.
Yet he was not dead when they picked next day
From the gully’s depth the wreck of him;
His fall had been stayed by the stag beneath
Who cushioned and saved the neck of him.
But the rest of his body—why, doctors said,
Whatever could break was broken;
Legs, arms, ribs, all of him looked like a toast
In a tumbler of port wine soaken.
“That your life is left you, thank the stag!”
Said they when—the slow cure ended—
They opened the hospital door, and thence
—Strapped, spliced, main fractures mended,
And minor damage left wisely alone,—
Like an old shoe clouted and cobbled,
Out—what went in a Goliath wellnigh,—
Some half of a David hobbled.