22
For it was told withal, he telling, and be correcting,
How they had met, they believed, with St. John, the muckle-hart-slayer,
How in the race they had run, and beaten the gillies of Rannoch;
How in forbidden glens, in Mar and midmost Athol,
Philip insisting hotly, and Arthur and Hope compliant,
They had defied the keepers; the Piper alone protesting,
Liking the fun, it was plain, in his heart, but tender of game-law;
Yea, too, in Meäly glen, the heart of Lochiel's fair forest,
Where Scotch firs are darkest and amplest, and intermingle
Grandly with rowan and ash—in Mar you have no ashes,
There the pine is alone or relieved by birch and alder—
How in Meäly fair, while stags were starting before—they
Made the watcher believe they were guests from Achnacarry.
And there was told moreover, he telling, the other correcting,
Often by word, more often by mute significant motion,
Much of the Cambridge coach and his pupils at Inverary,
Huge barbarian pupils, expanded in infinite series,
Firing-off signal guns (great scandal), from window to window
(For they were lodging perforce in distant and numerous houses}
Signals, when, one retiring, another should go to the Tutor:—
Much too of Kitcat, of course, and the party at Drumnadrochet,
Mainwaring, Foley, and Fraser, their idleness horrid and dog-cart;
Drumnadrochet was seedy, Glenmorison adequate, but at
Castleton, high in Braemar, were the clippingest places for bathing,
One by the bridge in the village, indecent, the Town-Hall christened,
Where howbeit had Lauder been bathing, and Harrison also,
Harrison even, the Tutor, another like Hesperus here, and
Up the water of Eye, half-a-dozen at least, all stunners.
And it was told, the Piper narrating and Arthur correcting,
Colouring he, dilating, magniloquent, glorying in picture,
He to matter-of-fact still softening, paring, abating,
He to the great might-have-been upsoaring, sublime and idëal,
He to the merest it-was restricting, diminishing, dwarfing,
River to streamlet reducing, and fall to slope subduing,
So was it told, the Piper narrating, corrected of Arthur,
How under Linn of Dee, where over rocks, between rocks,
Freed from prison the river comes, pouring, rolling, rushing,
Then at a sudden descent goes sliding, gliding, unbroken,
Falling, sliding, gliding, in narrow space collected,
