Robert Browning

“ In the stag's brain too; he resolves! Slow, sure,
With eye-stare unabated,
Feelingly he extends a foot
Which tastes the way ere it touches
Earth's solid and just escapes man's soft,
Nor hold of the same unclutches ⁠160
Till its fellow foot, light as a feather whisk,
Lands itself no less finely:
So a mother removes a fly from the face
Of her babe asleep supinely.
And now 'tis the haunch and hind foot's turn
— That's hard: can the beast quite raise it? ”

“ 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. ⁠200
"That your life is left you, thank the stag!" ”

“ He would meet with a rival ranger?
'Twas a gold-red stag that stood and stared,
Gigantic and magnific,
By the wonder — ay, and the peril — struck
Intelligent and pacific:
For a red deer is no fallow deer
Grown cowardly through park-feeding ”