Collected Works (Vol. III)

212 ORPHEUS It takes up the cry of the wind. Its eyes with weeping are blind. A strong hate whirls it behind As it flees for ever. Mad, with the tokens of Fear ; Branded, and sad, without cheer; Year after ghastly year, And it endeth never. And this is the mystical stranger, The subtle Arcadian God That lurks as for sorrow and danger, Yet rules all the earth with his rod. Abiding in spirit and sense Through the manifold changes of man, This soul is alone and intense And one—He is Pan. More subtle than mass as ye deem it He abides in the strife that is dust. Than spirit more keen as ye dream it, He is laughter and loathing and lust. He is all. Nature’s agonies scream It ; Her joys quire it clear ; in the must Of the vat is His shape in the steam. It Is Fear, and Disgust. For the spirit of all that is, The light in the lover’s kiss, The shame and sorrow and bliss ; They are all in Pan ; The inmost wheel of the wheels, The feeling of all that feels, The God and the knee that kneels, And the foolish man. For Pan is the world above And the world that is hidden beneath ; Fle grins from the mask of love ; ITis sword has a jewelled sheath. What boots it a maiden to gird her? Her rape ere the zeons began Was sure; in one roar of red murder She breaks: He is Pan. He is strong to achieve, to forsake her ; He is death as it clings to desire, Ah, woe to the Earth! If he wake her, Air, water and spirit and fire Rush in to uproot her and break her :— Yet he is the broken ; the pyre, And the flame and the victim; the maker, And master and sire! And all that is, is force. A fatal and witless course It follows without remorse With never an aim. Caught in the net we strive ; We ruin, and think we thrive ; And we die—and remain alive :— And Pan is our name! For the misery catches and winds us Deep, deep in the endless coil ; Ourself is the cord that binds us, And ours is the selfsame toil. We are; we are not; yet our date is An age, though each life be a span ; And ourself and our state and our fate is The Spirit of Pan. O wild is the maiden that dances In the dim waned light of the moon! Black stars are her myriad glances: Blue night is the infinite swoon ! But in other array advances The car of the holier tune; And our one one chance is in mystical trances ;— Thessalian boon ! For swift as the wheels may turn, And fierce as the flames may burn, The spirit of man may discern In the wheel of Will A drag on the wheels of Fate, A water the fires to abate, A soul the soul to make straight, And bid ‘‘ be still!” But ye, ye invoke in your city And call on his name on the hill The God who is born without pity, The horrible heart that is chill ;