“Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.”
Jane Austin - Pride & Prejudice
Rokeby Canto Second XVI
See, he emerges! – desperate now
All farther course – Yon beetling brow,
In craggy nakedness sublime,
What heart or foot shall dare to climb?
It bears no tendril for his clasp,
Presents no angle to his grasp:
Sole stay his foot may rest upon,
Is yon earth-bedded jetting stone.
Balanced on such precarious prop,
He strains his grasp to reach the top.
Just as the dangerous stretch he makes,
By Heaven, his faithless footstool shakes!
Beneath his tottering bulk it bends,
It sways,…it loosens,…it descends!
And downwards holds its headlong way,
Crashing o’er rock and copsewood spray
Loud thunders shake the echoing dell! –
Fell it alone? – alone it fell.
Just on the very verge of fate,
The hardy Bertram’s falling weight
He trusted to his sinewy hands,
And on the top unharm’d he stands! -
”Scott’s Poetical Works”, Rokeby - Sir Walter Scott -
