Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Hymn of Pan'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Hymn of Pan

From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle-bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion’s shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni and Sylvans and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and waves.
To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love,—as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the dædal earth,
And of heaven, and the Giant wars,
And love, and death, and birth.
And then I changed my pipings,—
Singing how down the vale of Mænalus
I pursued a maiden, and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus;
It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed.
All wept—as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood—
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Family Album ~ Diane Thiel

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

I like old photographs of relatives   
in black and white, their faces set like stone.   
They knew this was serious business.   
My favorite album is the one that's filled   
with people none of us can even name.   

I find the recent ones more difficult.   
I wonder, now, if anyone remembers   
how fiercely I refused even to stand   
beside him for this picture — how I shrank   
back from his hand and found the other side.   

Forever now, for future family,   
we will be framed like this, although no one   
will wonder at the way we are arranged.   
No one will ever wonder, since we'll be   
forever smiling there — our mouths all teeth.