VARIATION

That ben of herbs and shoots,
of clusters and fertility—
her robe has no compare
in the lands of Christendom.
 Her flank has such beauty,
 to me 'tis passing strange
 that she has no right in archives
 to the title of the kingdom;
 blest doubly with favours,
 she luxuriates in fruits
 that rarely develop.
 on open field bushes.
 In full dress, nought lacking,
 having gems of the woodland,
 and bloom on each coppice,
 you have no fault to mention.
 There the cock is high-breasted,
 giving his polished recitals,
 and other small song-birds,
 have their copious carols.
There's the little, trim buck,
most agile on green sward,
immune from slip or mishap,
from stumble or break-down;
 cloven-hoofed, horny,
 ranging through corrie,
 through heather and uplands,
 ascending it madly;
 mid bracken and brushwood,
 how capricious his fancy;
 in the depth of each gully,
 on the height of each hummock,
 he is sportive and bobbing,
 elusive, long-striding.
 When, alarmed in the wood,
 he goes into a frenzy,
 and runs through each spinney,
 he will not be hindmost;
 with the slenderest small hoof,
his stride was the lightest,
all over brown hillocks,
 skipping alternate mounds,
 as he longs for a tryst
 with his love mate in private.
The wee snarling doe
makes her home in the dale,
and she stays on the uplands,
with her young little fawns:
 she has sharp ear for hearing,
 roving eye for observing,
 and she is sure of her feet
 to sweep through the moorland.
 Though there came Caoilte,
 Cuchulainn and all such,
 all the men and the horses
 in King George's service,
 if her skin should escape
 from lead and from flame,
 she neither heard of nor saw one
 that would seize her alive;
 she is spry and long-legged,
 sprightly, eccentric,
 white-buttocked, stump-tailed;
 of hound apprehensive,
 she will not tread a plain,
 however steep be the hill-face;
 she is petulant, sullen,
 head-tossing, long-snouted,
 sharp-sighted, blink-eyed,
 excitable, watchful;
 and she stays on the moor
 where her kind were established.