Classic Poem

Most good it is that Pan is dead:
We be a sad and sullen folk
Who bend beneath a strange god's yoke
And grind our hearts for daily bread.

To him what sadness has been spared,
Who died before the world was old
Nor saw his forests bought and sold,
His shy, fleet wood-mates slain and snared.

Who died remembering the dim
Cool twilights when his clear pipes drew
The sweetest songster of the crew
To shrill an answer back to him.

Who, dead, remembers only this;
The darkling river's moonlit space
Wherefrom the white-limbed naiad's face
Lifted its wet red lips to his.

What man would wish him life—to see
His happy river made a slave;
His sleek, wild creatures, fierce and brave,
Heart-broken in captivity?

To know his nymphs and satyrs fled;
To see a stern God's altar made
Where once the crew of Bacchus played;
To know his forest mute with dread.

O, well that Pan is dead—that he
Hath missed all knowledge of the gray
Shadow of this bleak afterday,
And little mirth of gods that be!