Song of the Followers of Pan

Our bursting bugles blow apart

The gates of cities as we go; We bring the music of the heart From secret wells in Lillimo'.

We break in music on the morns-
Sing of the flower to stirring roots;
Apollo's cry is in the horns,

And Hermes' whisper in the flutes.

We come with laughter to the Earth,
And lightly stir the heading wheat:
Our God is Poesy and Mirth,

And loves the noise of woodland feet.

When dancers beat the air to sound,
After the time of yellow sheaves,

He stops to watch the merry round,

His pleased face looking through the leaves.

Little ants in leafy wood,
Bound by gentle Brotherhood,
While ye gaily gather spoil,

Men are ground by the wheel of toil;

While ye follow Blessed Fates,

Men are shriveled up with hates;
Or they lie with sheeted Lust,
And they eat the bitter dust.

Ye are fraters in your hall,
Gay and chainless, great and small;
All are toilers in the field,

Little Brothers of the Ground

All are sharers in the yield.
But we mortals plot and plan
How to grind the fellow-man;
Glad to find him in a pit,
If we get some gain of it.
So with us, the sons of Time,
Labor is a kind of crime,

For the toilers have the least,
While the idlers lord the feast.

Yes, our workers they are bound,
Pallid captives to the ground;
Jeered by traitors, fooled by knaves,
Till they stumble into graves.

How appears to tiny eyes
All this wisdom of the wise?

Death, too, is a chimera and betrays,

And yet they promised we should enter rest; Death is as empty as the cup of days,

And bitter milk is in her wintry breast.

There is no worth in any world to come,
Nor any in the world we left behind;
And what remains of all our masterdom?
Only a cry out of the crumbling mind.

We played all comers at the old Gray Inn,
But played the King of Players to our cost.

Wail of the Wandering Dead

We played Him fair and had no chance to win: The dice of God were loaded and we lost.

We wander, wander, and the nights come down
With starless darkness and the rush of rains;
We drift as phantoms by the songless town,
We drift as litter on the windy lanes.

Hope is the fading vision of the heart,

A mocking spirit throwing up wild hands. She led us on with music at the start,

To leave us at dead fountains in the sands.

Now all our days are but a cry for sleep,
For we are weary of the petty strife.
Is there not somewhere in the endless deep
A place where we can lose the feel of life?

Where we can be as senseless as the dust

The night wind blows about a dried-up well? Where there is no more labor, no more lust, Nor any flesh to feel the Tooth of Hell?

Our feet are ever sliding, and we seem
As old and weary as the pyramids.