The Prophetic Bard's Oration: From A Faun's Holiday

'Be warned! I feel the world grow old,

And off Olympus fades the gold

Of the simple passionate sun;

And the Gods wither one by one;

Proud-eyed Apollo's bow is broken,

And throned Zeus nods nor may be woken

But by the song of spirits seven

Quiring in the midnight heaven

Of a new world no more forlorn,

Sith unto it a Babe is born,

That in a propped, thatched stable lies,

While with darkling, reverent eyes

Dusky Emperors, coifed in gold,

Kneel mid the rushy mire, and hold

Caskets of rubies, urns of myrrh,

Whose fumes enwrap the thurifer

And coil toward the high dim rafters

Where, with lutes and warbling laughters,

Clustered cherubs of rainbow feather,

Fanning the fragrant air together,

Flit in jubilant holy glee,

And make heavenly minstrelsy

To the Child their Sun, whose flow

Bathes them His cloudlets from below . . . .

Long shall this chimed accord be heard,

Yet all earth hushed to His first word:

Then shall be seen Apollo's car

Blaze headlong like a banished star;

And the Queen of heavenly Loves

Dragged downward by her dying doves;

Vulcan, spun on a wheel, shall track

The circle of the zodiac;

Silver Artemis be lost,

To the polar blizzards tossed;

Heaven shall curdle as with blood;

The sun be swallowed in the flood;

The universe be silent save

For the low drone of winds that lave

The shadowed great world's ashen sides

As through the rustling void she glides.

Then shall there be a whisper heard

Of the Grave's Secret and its Word,

Where in black silence none shall cry

Save those who, dead-affrighted, spy

How from the murmurous graveyeards creep

The figures of eternal sleep.

Last: when 'tis light men shall behold,

Beyond the crags, a flower of gold

Blossoming in a golden haze,

And, while they guess Zeus' halls now blaze,

Shall in the blossom's heart descry

The saints of a new hierarchy! '

He ceased . . . and in the morning sky

Zeus' anger threatened murmurously.

I sped away. The lightning's sword

Stabbed on the forest. But the word

Abides with me. I feel its power

Most darkly in the twilit hour,

When Night's eternal shadow, cast

Over earth hushed and pale and vast,

Darkly foretells the soundless Night

In which this orb, so green, so bright,

Now spins, and which shall compass her

When on her rondure nought shall stir

But snow-whorls which the wind shall roll

From the Equator to the Pole . . . .

For everlastingly there is

Something Beyond, Behind: I wis

All Gods are haunted, and there clings,

As hounds behind fled sheep, the things

Beyond the Universe's ken:

Gods haunt the Half-Gods, Half-Gods men,

And Man the brute. Gods, born of Night

Feel a blacker appetite

Gape to devour them; Half-Gods dread

But jealous Gods; and mere men tread

Warily lest a Half-God rise

And loose on them from empty skies

Amazement, thunder, stark affright,

Famine and sudden War's thick night,

In which loud Furies hunt the Pities

Through smoke above wrecked, flaming cities.

For Pan, the Unknown God, rules all.

He shall outlive the funeral,

Change, and decay, of many Gods,

Until he, too, lets fall his rods

Of viewless power upon that minute

When Universe cowers at Infinite!