Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BOOK OF VISIONS: THE SADNESS OF PAN, by PAUL FORT



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BOOK OF VISIONS: THE SADNESS OF PAN, by                    
First Line: The rapturous lark has thrown to calm, unechoing skies, his trill's
Last Line: And suddenly pan hurled to that still sphere above the final cry of love!
Subject(s): Death; Grief; Love; Mythology - Classical; Pan (mythology); Dead, The; Sorrow; Sadness


The rapturous lark has thrown to calm, unechoing skies, his trill's last
passionate spray. The harvests, zephyr-stirred, closing above the bird, take the
last thought of day. Brushing the ears of grain a redly-slanting ray remounts to
heaven's veiled dome. On the horizon clear it burns, to disappear in the abyss
unknown.

Pan, level with the grain has raised his starry eyes. They light the flute that
Pan to hairy lips applies. They light the dark, their eyes illume the ripened
wheat, and his ten fingers fleet clasping the reed that gleams.

Swart chest that amber beads, in heaving chain, embrace (can they be moons thus
ranged 'neath clouds of sable hue?). O shaggy satyr's chest, those eyes illumine
you! They light -- is it a dream -- in the opal cameo suspended from the chain,
pale, dead Diana's face.

And I, who am the fields' reflective guardian, have I recognized god Pan with
earthward-drooping horns, who, sighing deep, regards his necklace? Suddenly,
breathing a deeper sigh, he droops his head, to lie flush with the evening
grain.

And, cradled by its wave, he modulates the strain of his flute with nimble
hands.

Oh, how ecstatic song can light the standing wheat! Pan lifts a finger,
breathes, and shifts the key, while I, sad watcher of the fields, behold his
breath divine and modulated sounds softly create the moon.

Rapidly she has slipped above the sea of wheat, the sweet moon like a bubble,
then mounted to the depths of the nocturnal sky.

Pan, propped on elbows, watched from depths of lunar grain.

Then from a wood nearby chanted the nightingale towards that full moon so fair;
upon the mounting trills of his voice sustained in air like a white flower that
swoons, poised on a fountain's crest.

Pan brooded, head on breast, letting the bird sing on. Sad, heedless of his
reed, upon the bare earth laid, with trembling hand he weighed his necklace of
dead moons.

Did he think of perished gods? Deeply and long he sighed. Did he think of all
the tasks his flute performed again, of rivers, of the breeze, of forests, of
the dawn, of all the work contrived by deities dead and gone? Or did he dream of
Hells extinguished by their fall? Was he dreaming of his soul, or of his flute
of flame, the god with life aglow?

He saw, regarding him, Diana's cameo.

And suddenly Pan hurled to that still sphere above the final cry of love!





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