Poem: "Hunting the White Stag"

[ysabetwordsmith]

Today I came across this article about a white stag in Scotland. The white stag is a powerful mythic figure, a sacred animal. It's a symbol of magic and of the soul. One of my favorite literary references is the hunt at the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The white stag led the four Pevensies back from Narnia to this world.

But I'm enough of a far-traveler myself to read between the lines. They were all grown up. They had made lives for themselves in Narnia. They had friends and duties there. They had plans for the next day that never came. All those things were torn away, never to return -- and they were thrust back into the bodies of children, back into lives they'd left behind years ago. That's not a part of the story that ever gets much telling, when people travel between worlds. So I wrote a poem about it ... because the white stag is also a symbol of death and resurrection. (The hind isn't in the book, but she wouldn't go away.)

Hunting the White Stag
King Edmund’s Farewell to Narnia

The woodsmen came and said to me
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no
A snow-white stag is running free
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no

And then I said, “Why by my crown,”
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no
“I’ll hunt that stag, and shoot him down.”
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no

So off we rode into the wood
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no
To catch the white stag if we could
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no

I saw a stag of seven tines
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no
He ran through brush, he ran through vines
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no

By his side ran a milk-white hind
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no
And so we left our world behind
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no

It broke our time, it broke our hearts
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no
But we knew we had played our parts
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no

So we took up our lives and kin
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no
But hoped some day to go again
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no

If we should come back to our own
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no
We’ll leave that white stag well alone
With a nonny no, nonny nonny no