efore dawn in the upper air; long before sunrise
flashes upon our lawns they go to glitter in light that has not yet
come to the World, and as the dawn works up from the ragged hills and
the stars feel it they go slanting earthwards, till sunlight touches
the tops of the tallest trees, and the hippogriffs alight with a
rattle of quills and fold their wings and gallop and gambol away till
they come to some prosperous, wealthy, detestable town, and they leap
at once from the fields and soar away from the sight of it, pursued by
the horrible smoke of it until they come again to the pure blue air.

He whom prophecy had named from of old to come to the City of Never,
went down one midnight with his magic halter to a lake-side where the
hippogriffs alighted at dawn, for the turf was soft there and they
could gallop far before they came to a town, and there he waited
hidden near their hoofmarks. And the stars paled a little and grew
indistinct; but there was no other sign as yet of the dawn, when there
appeared far up in the deeps of the night two little saffron specks,
then four and five: it was the hippogriffs dancing and twirling around
in the sun. Another flock joined them, there were twelve of them now;
they danced there, flashing their colours back to the sun, they
descended in wide curves slowly; trees down on earth revealed against
the sky, jet-black each delicate twig; a star disappeared from a
cluster, now another; and dawn came on like music, like a new song.
Ducks shot by to the lake from still dark fields of corn, far voices
uttered, a colour grew upon water, and still the hippogriffs gloried
in the light, revelling up in the sky; but when pigeons stirred on the
branches and the first small bird was abroad, and little coots from
the rushes ventured to peer about, then there came down on a sudden
with a thunder of feathers the hippogriffs, and, as they landed from
their celestial heights all bathed with the day's first sunlight, the
man whose destiny it was as from of old to come to the City of Never,
sprang up and caught the last with the magic halter. It plunged, but
could not escape it, for the hippogriffs are of the uncaptured races,
and magic has power over the magical, so the man mounted it, and it
soared again for the heights whence it had come, as a wounded beast
goes home. But when they came to the heights that venturous rider saw
huge and fair to the left of him the destined City of Never, and he
beheld t