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In
Divers Tones
by
Charles G.D. Roberts
Edited
by Tracy Ware
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THE
PIPES OF PAN
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Ringed
with the flocking of hills, within shepherding watch
of Olympus,
Tempe, vale of the gods, lies in green quiet withdrawn,—
Tempe, vale of the gods, deep-couched amid woodland
and woodland,
Threaded with amber of brooks, mirrored in azure
of pools,
All day drowsed with the sun, charm-drunken with
moonlight at midnight,
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Walled
from the world forever under a vapor of dreams,—
Hid by the shadows of dreams, not found by the curious
footstep,
Sacred and sweet forever, Tempe, vale of the gods.
How, through the cleft of its bosom, goes sweetly
the water Penëus!
How by Penëus the sward breaks into saffron
and blue!
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How
the long slope-floored beech-glades mount to the
wind-wakened
uplands,
Where, through flame-berried ash, troop the hoofed
Centaurs at morn!
Nowhere greens a copse but the eye-beams of Artemis
pierce it.
Breathes no laurel her balm but Phoebus’ fingers
caress.
Springs no bed of wild blossom but limbs of dryad
have pressed it.
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| Sparkle
the nymphs, and the brooks chime with shy laughter
and calls.
Here is a nook. Two rivulets fall to mix with
Penëus,
Loiter a space, and sleep, checked and choked
by the reeds.
Long grass waves in the windless water, strown
with the lote-leaf.
Twist thro’ dripping soil great alder roots,
and the air
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Glooms
with the dripping tangle of leaf-thick branches,
and stillness
Keeps in the strange-coiled stems, ferns, and wet-loving
weeds.
Hither comes Pan, to this pregnant earthy spot,
when his piping
Flags; and his pipes outworn breaking and casting
away,
Fits new reeds to his mouth with the weird earth-melody
in them, |
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Piercing,
alive with a life able to mix with the god’s.
Then, as he blows, and the searching sequence delights
him, the goat-feet
Furtive withdraw; and a bird stirs and flutes in
the gloom,
Answering. Float with the stream the outworn pipes,
with a whisper,—
“What the god breathes on, the god never can
wholly evade!”
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God-breath
lurks in each fragment forever. Dispersed by Penëus
Wandering, caught in the ripples, wind-blown hither
and there,
Over the whole green earth and globe of sea they
are scattered,
Coming to secret spots, where in a visible form
Comes not the god, though he comes declared in his
workings. And
mortals,
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Straying
in cool of morn, or bodeful hasting at eve,
Or in the depths of noonday plunged to shadiest
coverts,
Spy them, and set to their lips; blow, and fling
them away!
Ay, they fling them away,—but never wholly!
Thereafter
Creeps strange fire in their veins, murmur strange
tongues in their brain,
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Sweetly
evasive; a secret madness takes them,—a charm-struck
Passion for woods and wild life, the solitude of
the hills.
Therefore they fly the heedless throngs and traffic
of cities,
Haunt mossed caverns, and wells bubbling ice-cool;
and their souls
Gather a magical gleam of the secret of life, and
the god’s voice
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| Calls
to them, not from afar, teaching them wonderful
things. |
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