The patient Pan, Drunken with nectar Sleeps or feigns slumber Drowsily humming Music to the march of Time. This poor tooting creaking cricket, Pan half asleep, rolling over His great body in the grass, Tooting, creaking, Feigns to sleep, sleeping never: Tis his manner, Well he knows his own affair, Piling mountain-chains of phlegm On the nervous brain of man, As he holds down central fires Under Alps & Andes cold. Haply else we could not live Life would be too wild an ode Sun & planet would explode Ah! the poor Adamkind Fault of supplies From the fire fountains We busybodies Ever experiment See what will come of it Prove the quaint substances Prove our bodies, prove our essence Fortunes, genius, elements, Try a foot, try a hand, Then plunge the body in Then our wits characters And our gods if we can Analysing analysing As the chemist his new stone Puts to azote, puts to chlorine, Puts to vegetable blues. Ah my poor apothecaries, Can ye never wiselier sit, Meddle less & more accept, With dignity not overstepped Skies have their etiquette We are faithful to time Time measured in moments Only so many Share of Methusalem Share of the babe Hundredhanded, hundredeyed, Fussy & anxious We would so gladly Serve an apprenticeship Day by day faithfully Learn the use of Adam's tools Fire & water, azote, carbon, Gravity levity Hatred attraction Animals chemistry Botany land Have a right to our flesh Know the honest earth by heart Do the feat of Archimedes If the earth reject her sons Till theyve learned her alphabeta None but Hooke & Newton dare Cross the threshold when it thunders. Life is all too short for farming All too short for architecture All too short to learn the tongues And for philosophy Life's done ere weve begun to think. Solid farming haw & geeing Drive uphill the loaded team Bud the pear & dig potatoes What time Lyra's in the Zenith That is wholesome as it makes Man as massive as the glebe Pricks dropsical pretension Tames the infinite romance Underpins the falcon turrets High as fly falcons, fancy builds | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BABY MAY by WILLIAM COX BENNETT ECHOES: 7 by WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY LAUS VENERIS (A PICTURE BY BURNE-JONES) by LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS: 6 by EZRA POUND ROLL-CALL by NATHANIEL GRAHAM SHEPHERD IN VINCULIS; SONNETS WRITTEN IN AN IRISH PRISON: HONOUR DISHONOURED by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT |