Pan and Thalassius

O sea-stray, seed of Apollo,What word wouldst thou have with me?My ways thou wast fain to followOr ever the years hailed theeMan.

NowIf August brood on the valleys,If satyrs laugh on the lawns,What part in the wildwood alleysHast thou with the fleet-foot fauns--Thou?

See!Thy feet are a man's--not clovenLike these, not light as a boy's:The tresses and tendrils inwovenThat lure us, the lure of them cloysThee.

UsThe joy of the wild woods neverLeaves free of the thirst it slakes:The wild love throbs in us everThat burns in the dense hot brakesThus.

Life,Eternal, passionate, awless,Insatiable, mutable, dear,Makes all men's law for us lawless:We strive not: how should we fearStrife?

We,The birds and the bright winds know notSuch joys as are ours in the mildWarm woodland; joys such as grow notIn waste green fields of the wildSea.

No;Long since, in the world's wind veering,Thy heart was estranged from me:Sweet Echo shall yield thee not hearing:What have we to do with thee?Go.

Ay!Such wrath on thy nostril quiversAs once in Sicilian heatBade herdsmen quail, and the riversShrank, leaving a path for thy feetDry?

Nay,Low down in the hot soft hollowToo snakelike hisses thy spleen:"O sea-stray, seed of Apollo!"What ill hast thou heard or seen?Say.

ManKnows well, if he hears beside himThe snarl of thy wrath at noon,What evil may soon betide him,Or late, if thou smite not soon,Pan.

MeThe sound of thy flute, that flattersThe woods as they smile and sigh,Charmed fast as it charms thy satyrs,Can charm no faster than IThee.

FastThy music may charm the splendidWide woodland silence to sleepWith sounds and dreams of thee blendedAnd whispers of waters that creepPast.

HereThe spell of thee breathes and passesAnd bids the heart in me pause,Hushed soft as the leaves and the grassesAre hushed if the storm's foot drawsNear.

YetThe panic that strikes down strangersTransgressing thy ways unawareAffrights not me nor endangersThrough dread of thy secret snareSet.

WhenceMay man find heart to deride me?Who made his face as a starTo shine as a God's beside me?Nay, get thee away from us, farHence.

ThenShall no man's heart, as he raisesA hymn to thy secret head,Wax great with the godhead he praises:Thou, God, shalt be like unto deadMen.

GraceI take not of men's thanksgiving,I crave not of lips that live;They die, and behold, I am living,While they and their dead Gods givePlace.

Yea:Too lightly the words were spokenThat mourned or mocked at thee dead:But whose was the word, the token,The song that answered and saidNay?

WhoseBut mine, in the midnight hidden,Clothed round with the strength of nightAnd mysteries of things forbiddenFor all but the one most brightMuse?

HersOr thine, O Pan, was the tokenThat gave back empire to theeWhen power in thy hands lay brokenAs reeds that quake if a beeStirs?

WhomHave I in my wide woods need of?Urania's limitless eyesBehold not mine end, though they read ofA word that shall speak to the skiesDoom.

SheGave back to thee kingdom and glory,And grace that was thine of yore,And life to thy leaves, late hoaryAs weeds cast up from the hoarSea.

SongCan bid faith shine as the morningThough light in the world be none:Death shrinks if her tongue sound warning,Night quails, and beholds the sunStrong.

NightBare rule over men for agesWhose worship wist not of meAnd gat but sorrows for wages,And hardly for tears could seeLight.

CallNo more on the starry presenceWhose light through the long dark swam:Hold fast to the green world's pleasance:For I that am lord of it amAll.

God,God Pan, from the glad wood's portalThe breaths of thy song blow sweet:But woods may be walked in of mortalMan's thought, where never thy feetTrod.

ThineAll secrets of growth and of birth are,All glories of flower and of tree,Wheresoever the wonders of earth are;The words of the spell of the seaMine.