On distant hills the murmur first is heard,

Faint as the pipings of a snow-chill’d bird;

Down melting slopes soft echoes bear the cry

To vales and woods that yet enmantled lie.

At night the stars with milder lustre shine,

And thro’ the deeps convey th’ auspicious sign;

From all the land a mystic vapour springs,

While by the op’ning rill a presence sings;

Majestic trees unspoken calls avow,

And subtle juices fill each tingling bough:

Heaven and earth attend the rising lay,

And own, in Pan, a greater pow’r than they.

Poor timid souls, who tediously have said

From pen and pulpit, “Mighty Pan is dead!”

Dull’d with the darkness of a mystic creed,

They see the truth, but seeing fail to read.

For them in vain the vernal breezes stir;

Northward in vain the feather’d wand’rers whir;

Deaf with their doctrines, blind with their belief,

Amid such joys they whine in pious grief.

But yesterday within a willow’d dell

I heard the fauns their precious secrets tell;

In melting streams I saw the naiads wake,

And spy’d a satyr in the budding brake.

Sweet at the dusk, beneath young moonbeams dim,

All the wild scene inton’d a pagan hymn;

The mountains sang, as from their snowy shrouds

They sprang in loveliness to greet the clouds;

The plains responded, as they cast aside

The graceless garments of the wintertide.

Groves sway’d in music, and the dryad throng

Join’d with the bubbling fountain’s liquid song;

While far away the never-silent sea

Added the notes it learn’d in Arcady.

But hark! o’er ev’ry voice that softly blends,

A deeper note, a wilder hymn, ascends.

westward from shores where broken columns lie,

A call of antique beauty rides the sky:

O thou whose soul th’ eternal past recalls,

Whose eyes can pierce the present’s sombre walls,

Rememb’rest still the prophecy of old

That annual rings in syrinx-tones of gold—

Rememb’rest thou the promise of the morn,

The swelling tide of ecstasies reborn?

Once more Maenalian winds shall fan thy cheek,

And sea-borne voices from Arcadia speak;

Once more thine eyes upon the wat’ry plain

Shall glimpse old Nereus and his green-hair’d train;

Thee once again upon the sylvan steep

An Oread band shall gently sing to sleep;

And to thy sight, where ferny forest lies,

Fair forms thro’ immemorial years shall rise.

The accents ceas’d—and as I glanc’d around,

I drank the odours of the spongy ground;

From peak and vale mysterious sounds convey’d

Some potent message to the deep’ning shade;

The sinking moon unusual shadows threw,

And formless beings rov’d the spangled blue;

On ev’ry hand strange mem’ries fill’d the air—

I look’d for landmarks, and they were not there.

Yon outrag’d hill, by stack and chimney crown’d,

Loom’d from the past, a grassy virgin mound;

And by the stream where noisy paddles turn,

I saw a bearded god with flowing urn.

From raptur’d eyes the veil of ages fell;

Again I view’d the old familiar dell,

While round my form a saltant, shadowy choir

Sang of great Pan, and beauty’s smould’ring fire.

List’ning, I learn’d each long-forgotten truth

Of gods and men, and sempiternal youth;

And cry’d with joy to know that man’s mad day

Is brief, whilst Pan shall never pass away!