Of the Final Nature of Pan.
For everlastingly there is
Something Beyond, Behind: I wis
All Gods are haunted, and there clings,
As hound behind fled sheep, the things
Beyond the Universe's ken:
Gods haunt the Half-Gods, Half-Gods men,
And Man the brute. Gods, born of Night,
Feel a blacker appetite
Gape to devour them; Half-Gods dread
But jealous Gods; and mere men tread
Warily lest a Half-God rise
And loose on them from empty skies
Amazement, thunder, stark affright,
Famine and sudden War's thick night,
In which loud Furies hunt the Pities
Through smoke above wrecked, flaming cities.
For Pan, the Unknown God, rules all.
He shall outlive the funeral,
Change, and decay, of many Gods,
Until he, too, lets fall his rods
Of viewless power upon that minute
When Universe cowers at Infinite!
XIX
So far my mind runs, yet I see
How little faun-philosophy
Repays my heart would learn, not teach....
Better laugh long, lie, suck a peach
Couched under tiger-lily flowers
Which daze the low hot sun with showers
Of fragrance, while the dusty bee
Drones, fumbles, falls luxuriantly
Within their throats; couched, turn a song
Of flowers all the flowers among:
THE FAUN'S AFTERNOON SONG.
There is a vale beyond blue Ida's mount,
And thither often would I, piping, stray
To listen to the music of a fount
That spelt her tears out in a Dorian lay.
"Long, long ago," she wept, "Narcissus came
Wandering down the sunny-shafted glade;
Full weary was he of the lamp's gold flame
Wavering beneath the dusky colonnade.
"For at the fall of night forth from the dim
Gardens stole Echo; kneeling by his bed,
With small sweet love-words she importuned him
Who watched the lamp flame idle overhead.
"Dry was her hot flushed cheek and dark the fire
In her great eyes; her lips roamed warm and light
Over his arm; her murmurs of desire
Mixed with the many murmurs of the night.