Classic Poem

Abroad on a winter's night there ran
Under the starlight, leaping the rills
Swollen with snow-drip from the hills,
 Goat-legged, goat-bearded Pan.

He loved to run on the crisp white floor,
Where black hill-torrents chiselled grooves,
And he loved to print his clean-cut hooves,
 Where none had trod before.

And now he slacked and came to a stand
Beside a river too broad to leap;
And as he panted he heard a sheep
 That bleated near at hand.

"Bell-wether, bell-wether, what do you say,
Peace, and huddle your ewes from cold!"
"Master, but ere we went to fold
 Our herdsman hastened away:

"Over the hill came other twain
And pointed away to Bethlehem,
And spake with him, and he followed them,
 And has not come again.

"He dropped his pipe of the river-reed;
He left his scrip in his haste to go;
And all our grazing is under snow,
 So that we cannot feed."

"Left his sheep on a winter's night?"—
Pan folded them with an angry frown.
"Bell-wether, bell-wether, I'll go down
 Where the star shines bright."

Down by the hamlet he met the man.
"Shepherd, no shepherd, thy flock is lorn!"
"Master, no master, a child is born
 Royal, greater than Pan.

"Lo, I have seen; I go to my sheep,
Follow my footsteps through the snow,
But warily, warily see thou go,
 For child and mother sleep."

Into the stable-yard Pan crept,
And there in a manger a baby lay
Beside his mother upon the hay,
 And mother and baby slept.

Pan bent over the sleeping child,
Gazed on him, panting after his run:
And while he wondered, the little one
 Opened his eyes and smiled;

Smiled, and after a little space
Struggled an arm from the swaddling-band,
And raising a tiny dimpled hand,
 Patted the bearded face.

Something snapped in the breast of Pan;
His heart, his throat, his eyes were sore,
And he wished to weep as never before
 Since the world began.

And out he went to the silly sheep,
To the fox on the hill, the fish in the sea,
The horse in the stall, the bird in the tree,
 Asking them how to weep.

They could not teach—they did not know;
The law stands writ for the beast that's dumb
That a limb may ache and a heart be numb,
 But never a tear can flow.

So bear you kindly to-day, O Man,
To all that is dumb and all that is wild,
For the sake of the Christmas Babe who smiled
  In the eyes of great god Pan.