The Teeming Dark

Alas, the modern night seems desolate

Before reason and science wiped it clean

Crowds of curious creatures did gyrate

Darkness made every maid the shadows’ queen

Each humble peasant’s heart contained a god

Fit to sing in time with Pan’s panicked pipes

Glad girls were by spiced shadows neatly shod

Heeding night’s music, they shed standard types

Intoxicated by the teeming dark

Jubilant, they jumped and shone like bright sparks

Knowingly, to spirits, hungry ears hark

Lifted by pagan playing, ripe and stark

Moving in time, immortal rhythms mark

Night’s music melts mundane monotony

Overwhelmed by it are scolding sermons

Pan has no dogma save dark ecstasy;

Quaint as the past might seem in stories common

Raw and ribald were its whispers and songs

Since then, we have grown deaf to Pan’s playing

To him, we have forgotten, charm belongs

Undiminished by time’s petty plodding

Verily, if we heed haunted hours

We will detect delicious dithyrambs

Xylophonic are Pan’s piping powers

Yearnings they rouse, stronger than modern dams

Zest they restore to meek, civilized lambs