The Man Who Died by D. H. Lawrence

I
    There was a peasant near Jerusalem who acquired a young gamecock which
looked a shabby little thing, but which put on brave feathers as spring
advanced, and was resplendent with arched and orange neck by the time the
fig trees were letting out leaves from their end–tips.
    This peasant was poor, he lived in a cottage of mud–brick, and had only a
dirty little inner courtyard with a tough fig tree for all his territory.
He worked hard among the vines and olives and wheat of his master, then
came home to sleep in the mud–brick cottage by the path. But he was proud
of his young rooster. In the shut–in yard were three shabby hens which
laid small eggs, shed the few feathers they had, and made a
disproportionate amount of dirt. There was also, in a corner under a
straw roof, a dull donkey that often went out with the peasant to work,
but sometimes stayed at home. And there was the peasant's wife, a
black–browed youngish woman who did not work too hard. She threw a little
grain, or the remains of the porridge mess, to the fowls, and she cut
green fodder with a sickle for the ass.
    The young cock grew to a certain splendour. By some freak of destiny, he
was a dandy rooster, in that dirty little yard with three patchy hens. He
learned to crane his neck and give shrill answers to the crowing of other
cocks, beyond the walls, in a world he knew nothing of. But there was a
special fiery colour to his crow, and the distant calling of the other
cocks roused him to unexpected outbursts.
    "How he sings," said the peasant, as he got up and pulled his day–shirt
over his head.
    "He is good for twenty hens," said the wife.
    The peasant went out and looked with pride at his young rooster. A saucy,
flamboyant bird, that has already made the final acquaintance of the
three tattered hens. But the cockerel was tipping his head, listening to
the challenge of far–off unseen cocks, in the unknown world. Ghost
voices, crowing at him mysteriously out of limbo. He answered with a
ringing defiance, never to be daunted.
    "He will surely fly away one of these days," said the peasant's wife.
    So they lured him with grain, caught him, though he fought with all his
wings and feet, and they tied a cord round his shank, fastening it
against the spur; and they tied the other end of the cord to the post
that held up the donkey's straw pent–roof.
    The young cock, freed, marched with a prancing stride of indignation away
from the humans, came to the end of his string, gave a tug and a hitch of
his tied leg, fell over for a moment, scuffled frantically on the unclean
earthen floor, to the horror of the shabby hens, then with a sickening
lurch, regained his feet, and stood to think. The peasant and the
peasant's wife laughed heartily, and the young cock heard them. And he
knew, with a gloomy, foreboding kind of knowledge that he was tied by the
leg.
    He no longer pranced and ruffled and forged his feathers. He walked
within the limits of his tether sombrely. Still he gobbled up the best
bits of food. Still, sometimes, he saved an extra–best bit for his
favourite hen of the moment. Still he pranced with quivering, rocking
fierceness upon such of his harem as came nonchalantly within range, and
gave off the invisible lure. And still he crowed defiance to the
cock–crows that showered up out of limbo, in the dawn.
    But there was now a grim voracity in the way he gobbled his food, and a
pinched triumph in the way he seized upon the shabby hens. His voice,
above all, had lost the full gold of its clangour. He was tied by the
leg, and he knew it. Body, soul and spirit were tied by that string.
    Underneath, however, the life in him was grimly unbroken. It was the cord
that should break. So one morning, just before the light of dawn, rousing
from his slumbers with a sudden wave of strength, he leaped forward on
his wings, and the string snapped. He gave a wild, strange squawk, rose
in one lift to the top of the wall, and there he crowed a loud and
splitting