overpeer the edges of the World and seem to dance with dignity and
calm in that gentle light of evening that is Wonder's native haunt.
Then does the City of Never, unvisited and afar, look long at her
sister the World.

It had been prophecied that he should come there. They knew it when
the pebbles were being made and before the isles of coral were given
unto the sea. And thus the prophecy came unto fulfilment and passed
into history, and so at length to Oblivion, out of which I drag it as
it goes floating by, into which I shall one day tumble. The
hippogriffs dance before 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