THE DEAD PAN. 247 To us, us also open straight! -Oh, my own baby on my knees, Too well my own heart understands- -But God gives patience, Love learns strength, Love, strong as Death, shall conquer Death, Arms empty of her child, she lifts, "Still mine! maternal rights serene The crystal bars shine faint between "Meanwhile," the mother cries, "content! Our love was well divided. Its sweetness following where she went, "Well done of God, to halve the lot, To her, the heaven's completeness. "To us, this grave-to her, the rows "For her, to gladden in God's viewFor us, to hope and bear on !Grow, Lily, in thy garden new, Beside the rose of Sharon. "Grow fast in heaven, sweet Lily clipped, "While none shall tell thee of our tears, These human tears now falling, Till, after a few patient years, One home shall take us all in. "Child, father, mother-who left out? "Some smiling angel close shall stand 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. GODS of Hellas, gods of Hellas, Pan, Pan is dead. Christ hath sent us down the angels; And the whole earth and the skies Are illumed by altar-candles Lit for blessed mysteries; And a Priest's hand, through creation, Waveth calm and consecration And Pan is dead. Truth is fair: should we forego it? Let Pan be dead. Truth is large. Our aspiration When Pan is dead. What is true and just and honest, Ere Pan was dead. O brave poets, keep back nothing, COWPER'S GRAVE. Ir is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying. It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying. Yet let the grief and humbleness, as low as silence, languish. Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish. O poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing! O Christians, at your cross of hope, a hopeless hand was clinging! O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling! And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story, How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory, And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed, He wore no less a loving face because so brokenhearted, He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high | Deserted! Who hath dreamt that when the cross in darkness rested, vocation, THOU bay-crowned living One that o'er the baycrowned Dead art bowing, And o'er the shadeless moveless brow the vital shadow throwing, And o'er the sighless songless lips the wail and music wedding, And dropping o'er the tranquil eyes, the tears not of their shedding!— Take music from the silent Dead, whose meaning is completer, Reserve thy tears for living brows, where all such tears are meeter, And leave the violets in the grass to brighten where thou treadest! No flowers for her! no need of flowers-albeit bring flowers," thou saidest. The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her Yes, flowers, to crown the " cup and lute!" bending o'er him, since both may come to breaking. Or flowers, to greet the "bride!" the heart's own beating works its aching. Or flowers, to soothe the "captive's" sight, from earth's free bosom gathered, Reminding of his earthly hope, then withering as it withered. But bring not near the solemn corse, a type of human seeming. Lay only dust's stern verity upon the dust undreaming. And while the calm perpetual stars shall look upon it solely, Her sphered soul shall look on them, with eyes more bright and holy. |