What means this ancient tale? That _Jove_ In wrath still felt a parent's love: Whatever crimes he may have done, The father yearns to spare the son.
Ere we leave this friendly sky, And cool Ilyssus flowing by, Change the shrill cicala's song For the clamor of the throng, Let us make a parting prayer To the gods of earth and air.
My wish, O Friend, accords with thine, Say thou the prayer, it shall be mine.
This then, I ask, O thou beloved Pan, And all ye other gods: Help, as ye can, That I may prosper in the inner man;
Grant ye that what I have or yet may win Of those the outer things may be akin And constantly at peace within;
May I regard the wise the rich, and care Myself for no more gold, as my earth-share, Than he who's of an honest heart can bear.
"Poetry and paganism do not mix very well nowadays. The Hellenism of our versifiers is, as a rule, not Greek; it is derived partly from Swinburne and partly from Pater. But now and then there comes a poet who has real appreciation of the beauty of classic days; who can express sincerely and vividly the haunting charm of Greek or Roman culture. Such an one is the anonymous writer of these lines, which appeared in the London _Punch_."
The wind it sang in the pine-tops, it sang like a humming harp; The smell of the sun on the bracken was wonderful sweet and sharp. As sharp as the piney needles, as sweet as the gods were good, For the wind it sung of the old gods, as I came through the wood! It sung how long ago the Romans made a road, And the gods came up from Italy and found them an abode.
It sang of the wayside altars (the pine-tops sighed like the surf), Of little shrines uplifted, of stone and scented turf, Of youths divine and immortal, of maids as white as the snow That glimmered among the thickets a mort of years ago! All in the cool of dawn, all in the twilight gray, The gods came up from Italy along the Roman way.
The altar smoke it has drifted and faded afar on the hill; No wood-nymphs haunt the hollows; the reedy pipes are still; No more the youth Apollo shall walk in his sunshine clear; No more the maid Diana shall follow the fallow-deer (The woodmen grew so wise, the woodmen grew so old, The gods went back to Italy--or so the story's told!).