In the inner dark she saw a handsome bay horse with his clean ears
pricked like daggers from his naked head as he swung handsomely round
to stare at the open doorway. He had big, black, brilliant eyes, with a
sharp questioning glint, and that air of tense, alert quietness which betrays
an animal that can be dangerous... He was of such a lovely red-gold
colour, and a dark, invisible fire seemed to come out of him .. .
She looked at the glowing bay horse, that stood there with his ears back,
his face averted, but attending as if he were some lightning conductor. He
was a stallion . ..
Dimly, in her weary young-woman's soul, an ancient understanding
seemed to flood in . . . For some reason the sight of him, his power, his alive,
alert intensity, his unyieldingness, made her want to cry. She never did
cry ... But now, as if that mysterious fire of the horse's body had split some
rock in her, she went home and hid herself in her room, and just cried. The
wild, brilliant, alert head of St Mawr seemed to look at her out of another
world. It was as if she had had a vision, as if the walls of her own world had
suddenly melted away, leaving her in a great darkness, in the midst of which
the large, brilliant eyes of that horse looked at her with demonish question,
while his naked ears stood up like daggers from the naked lines of his
inhuman head, and his great body glowed red with power.
What was it? Almost like a god looking at her terribly out of the
everlasting dark, she had felt the eyes of that horse; great, glowing,
fearsome eyes, arched with a question, and containing a white blade of
light like a threat. What was his non-human question, and his uncanny
threat? She didn't know. He was some splendid demon, and she must
worship him. (St Mawr)
Author: D.H. Lawrence