ER VI

"THERE I dreamed, and I saw myself changing into a stag in dream, and
I felt in dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in dream I
arched my neck and braced my powerful limbs.

"I awoke from the dream, and I was that which I had dreamed.

"I stood a while stamping upon a rock, with my bristling head swung
high, breathing through wide nostrils all the savour of the world. For
I had come marvellously from decrepitude to strength. I had writhed from
the bonds of age and was young again. I smelled the turf and knew for
the first time how sweet that smelled. And like lightning my moving nose
sniffed all things to my heart and separated them into knowledge.

"Long I stood there, ringing my iron hoof on stone, and learning all
things through my nose. Each breeze that came from the right hand or the
left brought me a tale. A wind carried me the tang of wolf, and against
that smell I stared and stamped. And on a wind there came the scent of
my own kind, and at that I belled. Oh, loud and clear and sweet was the
voice of the great stag. With what ease my lovely note went lilting.
With what joy I heard the answering call. With what delight I bounded,
bounded, bounded; light as a bird's plume, powerful as a storm, untiring
as the sea.

"Here now was ease in ten-yard springings, with a swinging head, with
the rise and fall of a swallow, with the curve and flow and urge of an
otter of the sea. What a tingle dwelt about my heart! What a thrill spun
to the lofty points of my antlers! How the world was new! How the sun
was new! How the wind caressed me!

"With unswerving forehead and steady eye I met all that came. The old,
lone wolf leaped sideways, snarling, and slunk away. The lumbering bear
swung his head of hesitations and thought again; he trotted his small
red eye away with him to a near-by brake. The stags of my race fled from
my rocky forehead, or were pushed back and back until their legs broke
under them and I trampled them to death. I was the beloved, the well
known, the leader of the herds of Ireland.

"And at times I came back from my boundings about Eire', for the strings
of my heart were drawn to Ulster; and, standing away, my wide nose took
the air, while I knew with joy, with terror, that men were blown on the
wind. A proud head hung to the turf then, and the tears of memory rolled
from a large, bright eye.

"At times I drew near, delicately, standing among thick leaves or
crouched in long grown