A Runnable Stag

So a fateful hope lit up his eye,

And he opened his nostrils wide again,

And he tossed 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 horses as gallant and free,

Beheld him escape on the evening tide,

For out till he sank in the Severn Sea,

Till he sank in the depths of the sea —

The stag, the buoyant stag, the stag

That slept at last in a jewelled bed

Under the sheltering ocean spread,

The stag, the runnable stag.