XXX.

Ah!-in their 'stead, their hunter sons!

Ah, ha! they are on me- --they hunt in a ring— Keep off! I brave you all at once

I throw off your eyes like snakes that sting! You have killed the black eagle at nest, I think. Did you never stand still in your triumph, and shrink

From the stroke of her wounded wing?

XXXI.

(Man, drop that stone you dared to lift!-)
I wish you who stand there five a-breast,
Each, for his own wife's joy and gift,

A little corpse as safely at rest
As mine in the mangos!-Yes, but she
May keep live babies on her knee,
And sing the song she likes the best.

XXXII.

I am not mad: I am black.

I see you staring in my face-
I know you staring, shrinking back,
Ye are born of the Washington-race.

And this land is the free America.

And this mark on my wrist.. (I prove what I say) Ropes tied me up here to the flogging-place.

XXXIII.

You think I shrieked then?

Not a sound!

I hung, as a gourd hangs in the sun.

I only cursed them all around

As softly as I might have done

My very own child. From these sands
Up to the mountains, lift your hands,
O slaves, and end what I begun!

XXXIV.

Whips, curses; these must answer those!
For in this UNION, you have set
Two kinds of men in adverse rows,

Each loathing each; and all forget
The seven wounds in Christ's body fair,
While He sees gaping everywhere

Our countless wounds that pay no debt.

XXXV.

Our wounds are different. Your white men Are, after all, not gods indeed,

Nor able to make Christs again

Do good with bleeding. We who bleed (Stand off!) we help not in our loss! We are too heavy for our cross,

And fall and crush you and your seed.

XXXVI.

I fall, I swoon! I look at the sky.

The clouds are breaking on my brain.
I am floated along, as if I should die
Of liberty's exquisite pain.

In the name of the white child waiting fo. me In the death-dark where we may kiss ana agre White men, I leave you all curse-free

In my broken heart's disdain !

THE DEAD PAN.

Excited by Schiller's 'Gotter Griechenlands,' and partly founded on a well-known tradition mentioned in a treatise of Plutarch (De Oraculorum Defectu'), according to which at the hour of the Saviour's agony, a cry of Great Pan is dead!' swept across the waves in the hearing of certain mariners,-and the oracles ceased.

It is in all veneration to the memory of the deathless Schiller, that I oppose a doctrine still more dishonouring to poetry than to Christianity.

As Mr. Kenyon's graceful and harmonious paraphrase of the German poem was the first occasion of the turning of my thoughts in this direction, I take advantage of the pretence to indulge my feelings (which overflow on other grounds) by inscribing my lyric to that dear friend and relative, with the earnestness of appreciating esteem as well as of affectionate gratitude. 1844.

I.

GODS of Hellas, gods of Hellas,

Can ye listen in your silence?

Can your mystic voices tell us

Where ye hide? In floating islands,
With a wind that evermore

Keeps you out of sight of shore?

Pan, Pan is dead.

II.

In what revels are ye sunken,

In old Æthiopia?

Have the Pygmies made you drunken,

Bathing in mandragora

Your divine pale lips, that shiver

Like the lotus in the river?

Pan, Pan is dead.

III.

Do ye sit there still in slumber,
In gigantic Alpine rows?

The black poppies out of number

Nodding, dripping from your brows
To the red lees of your wine,

And so kept alive and fine?

IV.

Pan, Pan is dead.

Or lie crushed your stagnant corses
Where the silver spheres roll on,
Stung to life by centric forces
Thrown like rays out from the sun?-
While the smoke of your old altars
Is the shroud that round you welters?
Great Pan is dead.

V.

'Gods of Hellas, gods of Hellas,'
Said the old Hellenic tongue!
Said the hero-oaths, as well as
Poets' songs the sweetest sung!
Have ye grown deaf in a day?
Can ye speak not yea or nay—

VI.

Since Pan is dead?

Do ye leave your rivers flowing

All alone, O Naiades,

While your drenched locks dry slow in

This cold feeble sun and breeze?

Not a word the Naiads say,

Though the rivers run for aye.

VOL. II.-17

For Pan is dead.

VII.

From the gloaming of the oak-wood,
O ye Dryads, could ye flee?

At the rushing thunderstroke, would
No sob tremble through the tree?-
Not a word the Dryads say,

Though the forests wave for aye,

For Pan is dead.

VIII.

Have ye

left the mountain places, Oreads wild, for other tryst? Shall we see no sudden faces Strike a glory through the mist? Not a sound the silence thrills

Of the everlasting hills.

IX.

Pan, Pan is dead.

O twelve gods of Plato's vision,
Crowned to starry wanderings,-
With your chariots in procession,
And your silver clash of wings!
Very pale ye seem to rise,
Ghosts of Grecian deities,——

X.

Now Pan is dead!

Jove, that right hand is unloaded,
Whence the thunder did prevail,
While in idiocy of godhead
Thou art staring the stars pale!
And thine eagle, blind and old,
Roughs his feathers in the cold.

Pan, Pan is dead.