Poetry > Lady of the lake

Canto V.
THE COMBAT.
217
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.1
Instant, through copse and heath, arose
Bonnets and spears and bended hows:
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,1
The rushes and the willow-wand
Are bristling into axe and brand,
And every tuft of broom gives life 8
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.4
1 [MS.—“ From copse to copse the signal flew.
Instant, through copse and crags arose.”]
2 [MS.—“The bracken bush shoots forth the dart.”]
2 [MS.— “And each lone tuft of broom gives life
To plaided warrior arm’d for strife.
That whistle manned the lonely glen
With full five hundred armed men.’’]
* [The Monthly reviewer says—“We now come to the chef-
d'esuvre of Walter Scott,—a scene of more vigour, nature, and
animation, than any other in all his poetry.” Another anony¬
mous critic of the poem is not afraid to quote, with reference to