The Prophetic Bard's Oration

(From 'A Faun's Holiday')     'Be warned! I feel the world grow old,     And off Olympus fades the gold     Of the simple passionate sun;     And the Gods wither one by one:     Proud-eyed Apollo's bow is broken,     And throned Zeus nods nor may be woken     But by the song of spirits seven     Quiring in the midnight heaven     Of a new world no more forlorn,     Sith unto it a Babe is born,     That in a propped, thatched stable lies,     While with darkling, reverent eyes     Dusky Emperors, coifed in gold,     Kneel mid the rushy mire, and hold     Caskets of rubies, urns of myrrh,     Whose fumes enwrap the thurifer     And coil toward the high dim rafters     Where, with lutes and warbling laughters,     Clustered cherubs of rainbow feather,     Fanning the fragrant air together,     Flit in jubilant holy glee,     And make heavenly minstrelsy     To the Child their Sun, whose glow     Bathes them His cloudlets from below....     Long shall this chimed accord be heard,     Yet all earth hushed at His first word:     Then shall be seen Apollo's car     Blaze headlong like a banished star;     And the Queen of heavenly Loves     Dragged downward by her dying doves;     Vulcan, spun on a wheel, shall track     The circle of the zodiac;     Silver Artemis be lost,     To the polar blizzards tossed;     Heaven shall curdle as with blood;     The sun be swallowed in the flood;     The universe be silent save     For the low drone of winds that lave     The shadowed great world's ashen sides     As through the rustling void she glides.     Then shall there be a whisper heard     Of the Grave's Secret and its Word,     Where in black silence none shall cry     Save those who, dead-affrighted, spy     How from the murmurous graveyards creep     The figures of eternal sleep.     Last: when 'tis light men shall behold,     Beyond the crags, a flower of gold     Blossoming in a golden haze,     And, while they guess Zeus' halls now blaze,     Shall in the blossom's heart descry     The saints of a new hierarchy!'     He ceased ... and in the morning sky     Zeus' anger threatened murmurously.     I sped away. The lightning's sword     Stabbed on the forest. But the word     Abides with me. I feel its power     Most darkly in the twilit hour,     When Night's eternal shadow, cast     Over earth hushed and pale and vast,     Darkly foretells the soundless Night     In which this orb, so green, so bright,     Now spins, and which shall compass her     When on her rondure nought shall stir     But snow-whorls which the wind shall roll     From the Equator to the Pole ...     For everlastingly there is     Something Beyond, Behind: I wis     All Gods are haunted, and there clings,     As hound behind fled sheep, the things     Beyond the Universe's ken:     Gods haunt the Half-Gods, Half-Gods men,     And Man the brute. Gods, born of Night,     Feel a blacker appetite     Gape to devour them; Half-Gods dread     But jealous Gods; and mere men tread     Warily lest a Half-God rise     And loose on them from empty skies     Amazement, thunder, stark affright,     Famine and sudden War's thick night,     In which loud Furies hunt the Pities     Through smoke above wrecked, flaming cities.     For Pan, the Unknown God, rules all.     He shall outlive the funeral,     Change, and decay, of many Gods,     Until he, too, lets fall his rods     Of viewless power upon that minute     When Universe cowers at Infinite!