Watership Down (Watership Down 1)

Into the sky, the feathery sky and the rabbit.

The stream is running, running over the gravel,

Through the brooklime, the kingcups, the blue and gold of spring.

Where are you going, stream? Far, far away

Beyond the heather, sliding away all night.

Take me with you, stream, away in the starlight.

I will go with you, I will be rabbit-of-the-stream,

Down through the water, the green water and the rabbit.

In autumn the leaves come blowing, yellow and brown.

They rustle in the ditches, they tug and hang on the hedge.

Where are you going, leaves? Far, far away

Into the earth we go, with the rain and the berries.

Take me, leaves, O take me on your dark journey.

I will go with you, I will be rabbit-of-the-leaves,

In the deep places of the earth, the earth and the rabbit.

Frith lies in the evening sky. The clouds are red about him.

I am here, Lord Frith, I am running through the long grass.

r /> O take me with you, dropping behind the woods,

Far away, to the heart of light, the silence.

For I am ready to give you my breath, my life,

The shining circle of the sun, the sun and the rabbit.

Fiver, as he listened, had shown a mixture of intense absorption and incredulous horror. At one and the same time he seemed to accept every word and yet to be stricken with fear. Once he drew in his breath, as though startled to recognize his own half-known thoughts: and when the poem was ended he seemed to be struggling to come to himself. He bared his teeth and licked his lips, as Blackberry had done before the dead hedgehog on the road.

A rabbit in fear of an enemy will sometimes crouch stock-still, either fascinated or else trusting to its natural inconspicuousness to remain unnoticed. But then, unless the fascination is too powerful, there comes the point when keeping still is discarded and the rabbit, as though breaking a spell, turns in an instant to its other resource - flight. So it seemed to be with Fiver now. Suddenly he leapt up and began to push his way violently across the great burrow. Several rabbits were jostled and turned angrily on him, but he took no notice. Then he came to a place where he could not push between two heavy warren bucks. He became hysterical, kicking and scuffling, and Hazel, who was behind him, had difficulty in preventing a fight.

'My brother's a sort of poet too, you know,' he said to the bristling strangers. "Things affect him very strongly sometimes and he doesn't always know why.'

One of the rabbits seemed to accept what Hazel had said, but the other replied, 'Oh, another poet? Let's hear him, then. That'll be some return for my shoulder, anyway. He's scratched a great tuft of fur out.'

Fiver was already beyond them and thrusting towards the farther entrance tunnel. Hazel felt that he must follow him. But after all the trouble that he himself had taken to be friendly, he felt so cross at the way in which Fiver had antagonized their new friends that as he passed Bigwig, he said, 'Come and help me to get some sense into him. The last thing we want is a fight now.' He felt that Fiver really deserved a short touch of Bigwig.

They followed Fiver up the run and overtook him at the entrance. Before either of them could say a word, he turned and began to speak as though they had asked him a question.

'You felt it, then? And you want to know whether I did? Of course I did. That's the worst part of it. There isn't any trick. He speaks the truth. So long as he speaks the truth it can't be folly - that's what you're going to say, isn't it? I'm not blaming you, Hazel. I felt myself moving towards him like one cloud drifting into another. But then at the last moment I drifted wide. Who knows why? It wasn't my own will; it was an accident. There was just some little part of me that carried me wide of him. Did I say the roof of that hall was made of bones? No! It's like a great mist of folly that covers the whole sky: and we shall never see to go by Frith's light any more. Oh, what will become of us? A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel.'

'What on earth's all this?' said Hazel to Bigwig in perplexity.

'He's talking about that lop-eared nitwit of a poet down there,' answered Bigwig. 'I know that much. But why he seems to think we should want to have anything to do with him and his fancy talk - that's more than I can imagine. You can save your breath, Fiver. The only thing that's bothering us is the row you've started. As for Silverweed, all I can say is, I'll keep Silver and he can be just plain Weed.'