| |
| WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan, | |
| Down in the reeds by the river? | |
| Spreading ruin and scattering ban, | |
| Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, | |
| And breaking the golden lilies afloat | 5 |
| With the dragon-fly on the river. | |
| |
| He tore out a reed, the great god Pan | |
| From the deep cool bed of the river: | |
| The limpid water turbidly ran, | |
| And the broken lilies a-dying lay, | 10 |
| And the dragon-fly had fled away, | |
| Ere he brought it out of the river. | |
| |
| High on the shore sat the great god Pan, | |
| While turbidly flowed the river; | |
| And hacked and hewed as a great god can, | 15 |
| With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, | |
| Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed | |
| To prove it fresh from the river. | |
| |
| He cut it short, did the great god Pan, | |
| (How tall it stood in the river!) | 20 |
| Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, | |
| Steadily from the outside ring, | |
| And notched the poor dry empty thing | |
| In holes, as he sat by the river. | |
| |
| “This is the way,” laughed the great god Pan, | 25 |
| (Laughed while he sat by the river,) | |
| “The only way, since gods began | |
| To make sweet music, they could succeed.” | |
| Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, | |
| He blew in power by the river. | 30 |
| |
| Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! | |
| Piercing sweet by the river! | |
| Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! | |
| The sun on the hill forgot to die, | |
| And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly | 35 |
| Came back to dream on the river. | |
| |
| Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, | |
| To laugh as he sits by the river, | |
| Making a poet out of a man: | |
| The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,— | 40 |
| For the reed which grows nevermore again | |
| As a reed with the reeds in the river. | |
| |
