“If I Could Glimpse Him”
When in the Scorpion circles lowThe sun with fainter, dreamier light,And at a far-off hint of snowThe giddy swallows take to flight,And droning insects sadly knowThat cooler falls the autumn night;
When airs breathe drowsily and sweet,Charming the woods to colors gay,And distant pastures send the bleatOf hungry lambs at break of day,Old Hermes’ wings grow on my feet,And, good-by, home! I’m called away!
There on the hills should I behold,Sitting upon an old gray stoneThat humps its back up through the mold,And piping in a monotone,Pan, as he sat in days of old,My joy would bid surprise begone!
Dear Pan! ’Tis he that calls me out;He, lying in some hazel copse,Where lazily he turns aboutAnd munches each nut as it drops,Well pleased to see me swamped in doubtAt sound of his much-changing stops.
If I could glimpse him by the vineWhere purple fox-grapes hang their store,I’d tell him, in his leafy shrine,How poets say he lives no more.He’d laugh, and pluck a muscadine,And fall to piping, as of yore!