FAVORITES
OF PAN
Once, long
ago, before the gods
Had left this earth, by stream
and forest glade,
Where the first plough upturned the clinging sods,
Or the lost shepherd strayed,
Often to
the tired listener’s ear
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There came at noonday or beneath
the stars
A sound, he knew not whence, so sweet and clear,
That all his aches and scars
And every
brooded bitterness,
Fallen asunder from his soul
took flight,
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Like mist or darkness yielding to the press
Of an unnamed delight,—
A sudden
brightness of the heart,
A magic fire drawn down from
Paradise,
That rent the cloud with golden gleam apart,—
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And far before his eyes
The loveliness
and calm of earth
Lay like a limitless dream remote
and strange,
The joy, the strife, the triumph and the mirth,
And the enchanted change;
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And so he
followed the sweet sound,
Till faith had traversed her
appointed span,
And murmured as he pressed the sacred ground:
"It is the note of Pan!"
Now though
no more by marsh or stream
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Or dewy forest sounds the secret
reed—
For Pan is gone—Ah yet, the infinite dream
Still lives for them that heed.
In April,
when the turning year
Regains its pensive youth, and
a soft breath
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And amorous influence over marsh and mere
Dissolves the grasp of death,
To them that
are in love with life,
Wandering like children with
untroubled eyes,
Far from the noise of cities and the strife,
35
Strange flute-like voices rise
At noon and
in the quiet of the night
From every watery waste; and
in that hour
The same strange spell, the same unnamed delight,
Enfolds them in its power.
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An old-world
joyousness supreme,
The warmth and glow of an immortal
balm,
The mood-touch of the gods, the endless dream;
The high lethean calm.
They see,
wide on the eternal way,
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The services of earth, the life
of man;
And listening to the magic cry they say:
"It is the note of Pan!"
For, long
ago, when the new strains
Of hostile hymns and conquering
faiths grew keen,
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And the old gods from their deserted fanes,
Fled silent and unseen,
So, too,
the goat-foot Pan, not less
Sadly obedient to the mightier
hand,
Cut him new reeds, and in a sore distress
55
Passed out from land to land;
And lingering
by each haunt he knew,
Of fount or sinuous stream or
grassy marge,
He set the syrinx to his lips, and blew
A note divinely large;
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And all around
him on the wet
Cool earth the frogs came up,
and with a smile
He took them in his hairy hands, and set
His mouth to theirs awhile,
And blew
into their velvet throats;
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And ever from that hour the
frogs repeat
The murmur of Pan’s pipes, the notes,
And answers strange and sweet;
And they
that hear them are renewed
By knowledge in some god-like
touch conveyed,
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Entering again into the eternal mood,
Wherein the world was made.
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