The
Urban Pan
|
|
ONCE
more the magic days are come
With stronger sun and milder air;
The shops are full of daffodils;
There’s golden leisure everywhere.
I heard my Lou this morning shout:
|
5 |
“Here
comes the hurdy-gurdy man!”
And through the open window caught
The piping of the urban Pan.
I laid my wintry task aside,
And took a day to follow joy:
|
10 |
The
trail of beauty and the call
That lured me when I was a boy.
I looked, and there looked up at me
A smiling, swarthy, hairy man
With kindling eye—and well I knew
|
15 |
| The
piping of the urban Pan.
He caught my mood; his hat was off;
I tossed the ungrudged silver down.
The cunning vagrant, every year
He casts his spell upon the town!
|
20 |
And
we must fling him, old and young,
Our dimes or coppers, as we can;
And every heart must leap to hear
The piping of the urban Pan.
The music swells and fades again,
|
25 |
And
I in dreams am far away,
Where a bright river sparkles down
To meet a blue Aegean bay.
There, in the springtime of the world,
Are dancing fauns, and in their van,
|
30 |
Is one
who pipes a deathless tune—
The earth-born and the urban Pan.
And so he follows down the block,
A troop of children in his train,
The light-foot dancers of the street
|
35 |
Enamored
of the reedy strain.
I hear their laughter rise and ring
Above the noise of truck and van,
As down the mellow wind fades out
The piping of the urban Pan.
|
40 |
|
