Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

In that old Treatise of the Cheronaean,
Of how the Oracles have ceased to be,
'Tis told of Epitherses the Nicæan
How he, from Lemnos Island in the Ægean
Faring to Brindisi in Italy,

Was of a calm, in the Ionian Ocean,
O'ertaken, hard by the Echinades.
The sails, as drenched with some narcotic potion,
Slept on the mast; and sudden, without motion,
The vessel stood upon the windless seas.

Thence, duck-like, on the slow sea-swell it drifted,
Still forging Northward, for a long day's while,
From wave to wave-crest by the surges shifted,
Until, no more by swell or current lifted,
It stopped, as if hand-stayed, by Paxos Isle.

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There, the clouds gathering and the darkness nearing,
The prudent captain in the little bight,
Where the ship halted was, cast anchor, fearing
Lest by and by the wind should rise and veering,
The vessel cast upon the cliffs by night.

Now, when the heavens with night were overdarkened
And most folk slept, of those the bark aboard,
In the mid-mirkness, by the midnight starkened,
When but the helmsman and the sailors hearkened,
Who on the deck with him kept watch and ward,

Rending the silence and the night in sunder,
From out the secret places of the land
There of a sudden spoke a voice of thunder;
Whereat the awakened folk, for fear and wonder,
Arose and gathered in a trembling band.

Thrice upon Thamos' name, it thundered, crying,
The Egyptian pilot of the bark wind-bound,
Louder and louder still and nearer nighing;
What while the folk, affrighted of replying,
In silence hearkened to the horrent sound:

Till Thamos, taking on the prow his station,
Said, “Here am I! What wouldest thou with me?”
Whereto the voice, “Look thou, on thy salvation,
“That, to Palodes come, thou proclamation
“Make of the death there of the great God Pan!”

Therewith it stinted; nor the echo faded
Was of its speaking, when a mighty wind,
Blowing from the island, all the air invaded
And on the ship, that, by its anchors aided,
Rode at a standstill, falling from behind,

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Smote with such fury that each hempen cable
Parted, as though a skein of silk it were,
And out to seaward, on the wild waves' babel,
The ship went driving through the midnight sable,
Across the clamours of the wind-vexed air.

So for a day and night it scudded, fleeing
Before the tempest, till, at set of sun,
What time Palodes headland rose in seeing,
The storm as sudden sank as it to being
Came and the wind dropped with the daylight done.

The ship stood still before the promontory,
Arrested by some power past that of man,
And Thamos, standing in the sunset-glory,
Unto the cliffs and to the forests hoary
Thundered the tidings of the death of Pan.

Whereat from all the plains and peaks came leaping
Such sounds of pine as pass the written word;
Hill answered headland, woe on woe upheaping;
The air was full of wailing and of weeping,
That rent the rueful hearts in all that heard.

Up from the meadows rose the lamentation
And sank in music from the mourning skies;
Heaven answered Earth; and still, without cessation,
Its song of grief and funeral salutation
The world-all chanted on melodious wise.

The death-dirge of a world it was that floated
From earth to heaven and from heaven to earth,
In monodies of music throstle-throated;
The passion of the Past-time, death-devoted
By the same breath that gave the Present birth.