Classic Poem

The lilting echoes of Pan's silver pipes
Adown the budding woodland dells comes drifting,
Like petals sifting
Through the green tendrils of a flowering vine,
That twine on twine,
Circles the slender birches in the glade,
Like some fair maid,
Half gowned in trailing filaments of green,
Through which is seen
The glory of her round breasts' snowy splendor,
And white limbs slender.
Out of Spring's warm, sweeTheart Pan's music swells
Like water bells,
Rung by the Naiads in the waterfall,
The brooklet call
To drowsy blood, made slow and dull as death,
By Winter's breath,
To wake the drowsy pulse to joyous thrill.
The laughing rill
Runs not so joyous as my wakened blood —
Ah, life is good!
To breathe the new-born breeze,
That, sweeping through the trees,
Steals their perfume and gives it all to me,
So all my senses thrill. Now all my heart
Dances apart,
To the wild music of immortal Pan —
No longer man,
But airy sprite am I,
Child of the wide earth, and cloud-castled sky!