PAN LIVETH PAN LIVETH THEY told me once that Pan was dead, Nor in the grove I caught him. "Tell me, " 'twas so my clamor ran "Tell me, oh, where is Pan?" But, once, as on my pipe I played So, presently, whiles I did scan He was not dead! I found him there- I doubt if there be otherwhere A merrier god or dafter Nay, nor a mortal kindlier than 171 Beside me, as my pipe I play, While here and there her lambkins stray They look like me-those lambs-they say, And for that sturdy, romping clan, Pan is not dead, O sweetheart mine! In every note and every line He liveth in that sacred shrine That Love's first, holiest choice is! DR. SAM TO MISS GRACE KING Down in the old French quarter, At close of day Unto the quaint retreat Where lives the Voodoo Doctor By some esteemed a sham, Yet I'll declare there 's none elsewhere With the claws of a devilled crawfish, In the light of a midnight moon! DR. SAM I never should have known him And ne'er in vain That wizard's art invoke; With the caul of an alligator, By the light of the midnight moon! In all neurotic ailments I hear that he excels, Of weird, uncanny spells; The most unruly patient Gets docile as a lamb And is freed from ill by the potent skill Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam; Feathers of strangled chickens, Moss from the dank lagoon, With spider sweat In the light of a midnight moon! They say when nights are grewsome Old Sam steals out And hunts about For charms that hoodoos hate! That from the moaning river And from the haunted glen He silently brings what eerie things 173 The tongue of a piebald 'possum, The buzzard's breath that smells of death, On a lizard's eyes In the light of a midnight moon! WINFREDA (A BALLAD IN THE ANGLO-SAXON TONGUE) WHEN to the dreary greenwood gloam "While thou are gone to hunt," said she, Lo, from a further, gloomy wood, And saw the dame at work inside; Now when Winfreda saw the beast, She hit him with her cooking pan, And as she thwacked him on the head"Scat! scat!" the fair Winfreda said. The hills gave answer to their din- Wore token of Winfreda's might. LYMAN, FREDERICK, AND JIM Winfreda swept him o'er the wold And choked him till his gums were blue, And till, beneath her iron hold, His tongue hung out a yard or two, And with his hair the riven ground Was strewn for many leagues around. They fought a weary time that day, That awful wolf all limp and dead; So when the husband came at night To find the sop dished up for him; And as he ate, Winfreda told How she had laid the wolf out cold. The good Winfreda of those days LYMAN, FREDERICK, AND JIM (FOR THE FELLOWSHIP CLUB) LYMAN and Frederick and Jim, one day, Steamed to the ocean adown the bay Out of a New York slip. "Where are you going and what is your game?? The people asked those three. 175 |