The White Hind At Bay

by Eve Sweetser

Part I. The Prince


Hunting he could escape

Silken-clad innuendoes

ostrich-plummed obeisances

and perfumed giggles —

all were left behind

Trammeled between fat-pug chamberlians

(with doe-eyed ambitious daughters)

and rigid-spined prospective princessess

often he thought their yapping less melodious than hounds.


Slipping his leash at dawn

his one clear horn note

sounding triumphant over all the pack

cantering greyhound-keen

across the green

He saw a wonder.


A flash of thunderless summer lightning

between dark holly-trees?

Dew-glistening silver

she drew the swift pursuit

on like men dreaming —

they'd sell their spangled courtiers souls

for her white hide


But golden hooves

mocked them mirage-like

ever out of reach.


At last they are alone

The older, plumper hunters

sighing at visions

have returned to lunch

their snore-nosed dogs

have sought out easier meat.


In falling dusk, blacberry bushes

catch and stain his cloak;

his jaded steed

bog-muddied, stumbles on.

Once seen, he cannot give her up


Ahead, the cliff drops off —

triumph replaces weariness.

With blade in hand and heartbeat in his throat

he leaps to the earth

to stand half-angry; stricken

where is his dreamed-of flight?

She's a spent animal

with dustmarked silver haunches

nostrils distended


His eyes and daggerpoint

drop towards the ground

and then reluctantly his raised glance meets her own

to see himself — beset

worried by hounds

only to meet a knife at last.

Shaken almost equally

out of himself

(has dream come true, or truthful world turned dream?)

his hands reach out — she cannot stay afraid

They read their joint enlargement

written in each other's faces:

the hunt is over



Part II. The Hind.


The hunter presses close

but still on trembling legs she flees.

All of the other hunters

(dogged as their hounds)

she has outrun

only this one

seems inescapable as memory.

She leads him through briars, bogs

scent-killing brooks — inexorably

the following fate comes on


Always, till now, some twist has let her out.

In exhaulted desperation

she sees the cliff before her.

From teeth and knives

her white hide is no protection

"Leave off these fawnish fantasies,"

her kind deer parents often said

"What's a white skin?

Does every third-born son

wed a princess?"


Can wild hope save her?

Can she be again

the princess she was in childhood

(or was it dreamed of?)

exquisite and beloved,

ideal and human both?

It is so far — so long ago

she left off thinking of glass slippers

accepted her four hooves


Pushed to exhausted but defiant breaking-point

she stands high-headed;

sweat-tarnished sides are quivering

but fear-dilated pupils meet the prince's eyes.

Suddenly, memory and hope unite

a surge of terror floods her veins —

and look! A princess stands there.

Seeing the transcendent joy

overcome shock on the prince's face

she is transformed.











About the Author:
Eve Sweetser is an academic, linguist, and poet in Berkeley, California. This poem is based on Madame d'Aulnoy's French fairy tale, The White Deer.

Copyright © 1999 by Eve Sweetser. The poem may be not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.


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