Passed like the mournful cry
Of sunward sailing cranes.'"
"You repeat poetry so beautifully," he exclaimed, enchanted with the pathetic voice, that could express so much, yet was so simply sweet.
They were not born poets. He had great trouble about his Latin hexameters. He could feel it floating through his brain, but it was very elusive, vanishing before it was caught. She made a few little lines without rhyming.
Then he told her of the other god that had ruled a realm of lovely thoughts, until, as the legend ran, when Christ, the Redeemer of mankind, was born, a great groan was heard all over the isles of Greece, the rushes bowed their heads, and the waves shuddered when it was proclaimed that Olympus was dethroned, and Pan was dead.
"And that dismal cry rose slowly,
And sank slowly through the air,
Full of spirit's melancholy
And eternity's despair
As they heard the words it said—