(no subject)

In English class, Miss Peckham is saying something about Wordsworth and boats. Bran hardly hears her; his mind is full of thunder, the sound of running foxes and the barking of hounds on the chase. Occasionally, Bran recognizes one word or another: "pinnace", "upreared", "trembling". Then a whole passage breaks through the pounding in Bran's head:

In my thoughts
There was a darkness -- call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Of hourly objects, images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields,
But huge and mighty forms that do not live
Like living men moved slowly through my mind
By day, and were the trouble of my dreams.

"I am the stag : with seven tines," Bran mutters. He does not hear Miss Peckham compliment him on his use of literary allusion.