own
of skin and barely two feet high. Their ears are pointed like the
squirrel's, only far larger, and they leap to prodigious heights.
They live all day under deep pools in the loneliest marshes, but at
night they come up and dance. Each Wild Thing has over its head a
marsh-light, which moves as the Wild Thing moves; they have no
souls, and cannot die, and are of the kith of the Elf-folk.

All night they dance over the marshes, treading upon the reflection
of the stars (for the bare surface of the water will not hold them
by itself); but when the stars begin to pale, they sink down one by
one into the pools of their home. Or if they tarry longer, sitting
upon the rushes, their bodies fade from view as the marsh-fires pale
in the light, and by daylight none may see the Wild Things of the
kith of the Elf-folk. Neither may any see them even at night unless
they were born, as I was, in the hour of dusk, just at the moment
when the first star appears.

Now, on the night that I tell of, a little Wild Thing had gone
drifting over the waste, till it came right up to the walls of the
cathedral and danced upon the images of the coloured saints as they
lay in the water among the reflection of the stars. And as it leaped
in its fantastic dance, it saw through the painted windows to where
the people prayed, and heard the organ roaring over the marshes. The
sound of the organ roared over the marshes, but the song and prayers
of the people streamed up from the cathedral's highest tower like
thin gold chains, and reached to Paradise, and up and down them went
the angels from Paradise to the people, and from the people to
Paradise again.

Then something akin to discontent troubled the Wild Thing for the
first time since the making of the marshes; and the soft grey ooze
and the chill of the deep water seemed to be not enough, nor the
first arrival from northwards of the tumultuous geese, nor the wild
rejoicing of the wings of the wildfowl when every feather sings, nor
the wonder of the calm ice that comes when the snipe depart and
beards the rushes with frost and clothes the hushed waste with a
mysterious haze where the sun goes red and low, nor even the dance
of the Wild Things in the marvellous night; and the little Wild
Thing longed to have a soul, and to go and worship God.

And when evensong was over and the lights were out, it went back
crying to its kith.

But on the next night, as soon as the images of the stars app