Your gentle service gay,

VI.

Nor self-denial, nor sharp penance knew ; Well might each heart be happy in that day —

For were the happy not akin to you?

The beautiful alone the Holy there!

No pleasure shamed the gods of that young race; So that the chaste Camænæ favoring were,

And the subduing Grace.

VII.

Your shrines were palaces;

Your honoring ministrants were heroes crowned;
Your rites were sports - the Isthmian jubilees -
And chariots thundering o'er Olympian ground.
Fair round the altar where the incense breathed,
Moved your melodious dance inspired; and fair
Above victorious brows, the garland wreathed
Sweet leaves round odorous hair!

VIII.

The shouting Thyrsus-swinger,

And the wild car the exulting Panthers bore, Announced the presence of the Rapture-Bringer Bounded the Satyr and blithe Faun before ; And Mænads, as the frenzy stung the soul,

Hymned, in their madding dance, the glorious wine As ever beckoned to the lusty bowl

The ruddy host divine!

Before the bed of death

IX.

No ghastly spectre stood:-but from the porch

Of life, the lip - one kiss inhaled the breath,
And a mute Genius gently lowered his torch.
The judgment-balance of the realms below,

A judge, himself of mortal lineage, held;
The very Furies, at the Thracian's woe
Were moved and music-spelled.

In the Elysian grove

X.

The Shades renewed the pleasures life held dear; The faithful spouse rejoined remembered love, And rushed along the meads the charioteer ; There Linus poured the old accustomed strain, Admetus there Alcestis still could greet: His friend once more Orestes could regain, Philoctete!

His arrows

XI.

More glorious than the meeds

To Labor choosing Virtue's path sublime, The grand achievers of renowned deeds

Up to the seats of gods themselves could climb, Before the dauntless Rescuer of the dead, Bowed down the silent and immortal Host; And the twin Stars their guiding lustre shed, On the bark tempest-tost!

XII.

Art thou fair world, no more?

Return, thou virgin-bloom, on Nature's face. Ah, only on the Minstrel's magic shore,

Can we the footstep of sweet Fable trace! The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life; Vainly we search the earth of gods bereft ; And where the image with such warmth was rife, A shade alone is left!

XIII.

Cold, from the North, has gone

Over the flowers the blast that killed their May, And to enrich the worship of the One,

A Universe of gods must pass away. Mourning, I search on yonder starry steeps, But thee no more, Selene, there I see ! And through the woods I call, and o'er the deeps. No voice replies to me!

XIV.

Deaf to the joys she gives

Blind to the pomp of which she is possest Unconscious of the spiritual Power that lives Around and rules her - by our bliss unblest — Dull to the Art that colors or creates,

Like the dead time-piece, godless Nature creeps Her plodding round, and, by the leaden weights, The slavish motion keeps.

To-morrow to receive

XV.

New life, she digs her proper grave to-day;
And icy moons with weary sameness weave

From their own light their fulness and decay.
Home to the Poet's Land the gods are flown,
Light use in them that later world discerns,
Which, the diviner leading-strings outgrown,
On its own axle turns.

XVI.

Home! and with them are gone

The hues they gazed on and the tones they heard; Life's Beauty and life's Melody: - alone

Broods o'er the desolate void the lifeless word ;

Yet, rescued from Time's deluge, still thy throng
Unseen the Pindus they were wont to cherish;
Ah, that which gains immortal life in song,

To mortal life must perish!

Mrs. Browning's poem, "The Dead Pan," was written to express thoughts and feelings opposed to those set forth by the German poet, Schiller, in the preceding lyric.

She also embodies in it a legend mentioned by Plutarch, according to which, at the time of our Saviour's agony upon the cross, a cry of "Great Pan is dead!" swept across the waves in the hearing of certain mariners and the oracles ceased.

In early pagan times Pan was the god of the woods and fields and the particular patron of shepherds. As the name signifies all, he came to be regarded in later times a symbol of the universe and a personification of Nature. Finally Pan became a representative of all the Greek gods, and of paganism itself. It is in this last character that we must think of him when we read Mrs. Browning's poem.

In what revels are ye sunken,

In old Ethiopia?

Have the pygmies made you drunken

Bathing in mandragora

Your divine pale lips that shiver

Like the lotus in the river?

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.

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

Since Pan is dead?

Do ye leave your rivers flowing

All along, O Naiades,

While your drenched locks dry slow in