Pan at Lane Cove

SCALY with poison, bright with flame,

Great fungi steam beside the gate,

Run tentacles through flagstone cracks,

Or claw beyond, where meditate

Wet poplars on a pitchy lawn.

Some seignior of colonial fame

Has planted here a stone-cut faun

Whose flute juts like a frozen flame.

O lonely faun, what songs are these

For skies where no Immortals hide?

Why finger in this dour abode

Those Pan-pipes girdled at your side?

Your Gods, and Hellas too, have passed,

Forsaken are the Cyclades,

And surely, faun, you are the last

To pipe such ancient songs as these.

Yet, blow your stone-lipped flute and blow

Those red-and-silver pipes of Pan.

Cold stars are bubbling round the moon,

Which, like some golden Indiaman

Disgorged by waterspouts and blown

Through heaven's archipelago,

Drives orange bows by clouds of stone . . .

Blow, blow your flute, you stone boy, blow!

And, Chiron, pipe your centaurs out,

The night has looped a smoky scarf

Round campanili in the town,

And thrown a cloak about Clontarf.

Now earth is ripe for Pan again,

Barbaric ways and Paynim rout,

And revels of old Samian men.

O Chiron, pipe your centaurs out.

This garden by the dark Lane Cove

Shall spark before thy music dies

With silver sandals; all thy gods

Be conjured from Ionian skies.

Those poplars in a fluting-trice

They'll charm into an olive-grove

And dance a while in Paradise

Like men of fire above Lane Cove.