# Poems and Ballads (third series)/Pan and Thalassius

PAN AND THALASSIUS.
a lyrical idyl.
THALASSIUS.
PAN.
What word wouldst thou have with me? My ways thou wast fain to follow Or ever the years hailed thee Man.
Now If August brood on the valleys, If satyrs laugh on the lawns, What part in the wildwood alleys Hast thou with the fleet-foot fauns— Thou?
See! Thy feet are a man's—not cloven Like these, not light as a boy's: The tresses and tendrils inwoven That lure us, the lure of them cloys Thee.
Us The joy of the wild woods never Leaves free of the thirst it slakes: The wild love throbs in us ever That burns in the dense hot brakes Thus.
Life, Eternal, passionate, awless, Insatiable, mutable, dear, Makes all men's law for us lawless: We strive not: how should we fear Strife?
We, The birds and the bright winds know not Such joys as are ours in the mild Warm woodland; joys such as grow not In waste green fields of the wild Sea.
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.
THALASSIUS.
Such wrath on thy nostril quivers As once in Sicilian heat Bade herdsmen quail, and the rivers Shrank, leaving a path for thy feet Dry?
Nay, Low down in the hot soft hollow Too snakelike hisses thy spleen: 'O sea-stray, seed of Apollo!' What ill hast thou heard or seen? Say.
Man Knows well, if he hears beside him The snarl of thy wrath at noon, What evil may soon betide him, Or late, if thou smite not soon, Pan.
Me The sound of thy flute, that flatters The woods as they smile and sigh, Charmed fast as it charms thy satyrs, Can charm no faster than I Thee.
Fast Thy music may charm the splendid Wide woodland silence to sleep With sounds and dreams of thee blended And whispers of waters that creep Past.
Here The spell of thee breathes and passes And bids the heart in me pause, Hushed soft as the leaves and the grasses Are hushed if the storm's foot draws Near.
Yet The panic that strikes down strangers Transgressing thy ways unaware Affrights not me nor endangers Through dread of thy secret snare Set.
PAN.
May man find heart to deride me? Who made his face as a star To shine as a God's beside me? Nay, get thee away from us, far Hence.
THALASSIUS.
Shall no man's heart, as he raises A hymn to thy secret head, Wax great with the godhead he praises: Thou, God, shalt be like unto dead Men.
PAN.
I 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 give Place.
THALASSIUS.
Too lightly the words were spoken That mourned or mocked at thee dead: But whose was the word, the token, The song that answered and said Nay?
PAN.
But mine, in the midnight hidden, Clothed round with the strength of night And mysteries of things forbidden For all but the one most bright Muse?
THALASSIUS.
Or thine, O Pan, was the token That gave back empire to thee When power in thy hands lay broken As reeds that quake if a bee Stirs?
PAN.
Have I in my wide woods need of? Urania's limitless eyes Behold not mine end, though they read of A word that shall speak to the skies Doom.
THALASSIUS.
Gave back to thee kingdom and glory, And grace that was thine of yore,
And life to thy leaves, late hoary As weeds cast up from the hoar Sea.
Song Can bid faith shine as the morning Though light in the world be none: Death shrinks if her tongue sound warning, Night quails, and beholds the sun Strong.
PAN.
Bare rule over men for ages Whose worship wist not of me And gat but sorrows for wages, And hardly for tears could see Light.
Call No more on the starry presence Whose light through the long dark swam:
Hold fast to the green world's pleasance: For I that am lord of it am All.
THALASSIUS.
God Pan, from the glad wood's portal The breaths of thy song blow sweet: But woods may be walked in of mortal Man's thought, where never thy feet Trod.
Thine All 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 sea Mine.