IV.

Go, be sure of my love, by that treason forgiven;
Of my prayers, by the blessings they win thee from
Heaven;

Of my grief-(guess the length of the sword by the sheath's)

By the silence of life, more pathetic than death's!

Go,-be clear of that day!

A REED.

I.

I AM no trumpet, but a reed;
No flattering breath shall from me lead
A silver sound, a hollow sound:
I will not ring, for priest or king,
One blast that in re-echoing

Would leave a bondsman faster bound.

II.

I am no trumpet, but a reed,

A broken reed, the wind indeed

Left flat upon a dismal shore;

Yet if a little maid or child
Should sigh within it, earnest-mild

This reed will answer evermore.

III.

I am no trumpet, but a reed;

Go, tell the fishers, as they spread

Their nets along the river's edge,

I will not tear their nets at all,

Nor pierce their hands, if they should fall: Then let them leave me in the sedge.

THE DEAD PAN.

Excited by Schiller's 'Götter Griechenlands,' and partly founded on a well-known tradition mentioned in a treatise of Plutarch ('De Oraculorum Defectu'), according to which, at the hour of the Saviour's agony, a cry of 'Great Pan is dead!' swept across the waves in the hearing of certain mariners, and the oracles ceased.

It is in all veneration to the memory of the deathless Schiller, that I oppose a doctrine still more dishonouring to poetry than to Christianity.

As Mr. Kenyon's graceful and harmonious paraphrase of the German poem was the first occasion of the turning of my thoughts in this direction, I take advantage of the pretence to indulge my feelings (which overflow on other grounds) by inscribing my lyric to that dear friend and relative, with the earnestness of appreciating esteem as well as of affectionate gratitude. 1844.

I.

GODS of Hellas, gods of Hellas,
Can ye listen in your silence ?

Can your mystic voices tell us

Where ye hide? In floating islands,
With a wind that evermore

Keeps you out of sight of shore?

Pan, Pan is dead.

II.

In what revels are ye sunken,

In old Æthiopia ?

Have the Pygmies made you drunken,

Bathing in mandragora

Your divine pale lips, that shiver

Like the lotus in the river?

Do ye sit there still in slumber,

In gigantic Alpine rows?

The black poppies out of number
Nodding, dripping from your brows
To the red lees of your wine,

And so kept alive and fine?

IV.

Pan, Pan is dead.

Or lie crushed your stagnant corses
Where the silver spheres roll on,
Stung to life by centric forces

Thrown like rays out from the sun?-
While the smoke of your old altars
Is the shroud that round you welters ?

Great Pan is dead.

V.

'Gods of Heilas, gods of Hellas'
Said the old Hellenic tongue,-
Said the hero-oaths, as well as
Poets' songs the sweetest sung:
Have ye grown deaf in a day?
Can ye speak not yea or nay,

Since Pan is dead?

VI

Do ye leave your rivers flowing

All alone, O Naiades,

While your drenched locks dry slow in

This cold feeble sun and breeze?

Not a word the Naiads say,

Though the rivers run for aye;

For Pan is dead.

VII.

From the gloaming of the oak-wood,
O ye Dryads, could ye flee?

At the rushing thunderstroke, would
No sob tremble through the tree?
Not a word the Dryads say,

Though the forests wave for aye;

For Pan is dead.

VIII.

Have ye left the mountain places,
Oreads wild, for other tryst?

Shall we see no sudden faces
Strike a glory through the mist?
Not a sound the silence thrills

Of the everlasting hills:

Pan, Pan is dead.