Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/1075

 JOHN DAVIDSON

When he turned at bay in the leafy gloom,

In the emerald gloom where the brook ran deep He heard in the distance the rollers boom, And he saw in a vision of peaceful sleep In a wonderful vision of sleep, A stag of warrant, a stag, a stag, A runnable stag m a jewell'd bed, Under the sheltering ocean dead, A stag, a runnable stag.

��So a fateful hope lit up his eye,

And he opcn'd his nostrils wide again, And he toss'd his branching antlers high

As he headed the hunt down the Charlock glen,

As he raced down the echoing glen

For five miles more, the stag, the stag, For twenty miles, and five and five, Not to be caught now, dead or alive, The stag, the runnable stag.

��Three hundred gentlemen, able to ride,

Three hundred horseb as gallant and free, Beheld him escape on the evening tide, Far out till he sank in the Severn Sea, Till he bank in the depths of the sea The btag, the buoyant stag, the stag That slept at last in a jewell'd bed Under the sheltering ocean spread. The stag, the runnable stag.

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