' It is no wonder if the minds of men were moved
at this occurrence and they stood aghast to find themselves thus
touching hands with forgotten ages, and following an antiquity with
hound and horn. And even for you, it is scarcely in an idle
curiosity that you ponder how many centuries this stag had carried
its free antlers through the wood, and how many summers and winters
had shone and snowed on the imperial badge. If the extent of
solemn wood could thus safeguard a tall stag from the hunter's
hounds and houses, might not you also play hide-and-seek, in these
groves, with all the pangs and trepidations of man's life, and
elude Death, the mighty hunter, for more than the span of human
years? Here, also, crash his arrows; here, in the farthest glade,
sounds the gallop of the pale horse. But he does not hunt this
cover with all his hounds, for the game is thin and small: and if
you were but alert and wary, if you lodged ever in the deepest
thickets, you too might live on into later generations and astonish
men by your stalwart age and the trophies of an immemorial success.
For the forest takes away from you all excuse to die. There is
nothing here to cabin or thwart your free desires. Here all the
impudencies of the brawling world reach you no more. You may count
your hours, like Endymion, by the strokes of the lone woodcutter,
or by the progression of the lights and shadows and the sun
wheeling his wide circuit through the naked heavens.
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