the look of a live animal. And then they said, “It is true that Pan is dead.”
And, standing melancholy by that huge prone body, they looked for long at memorable Pan.
And evening came and a small star appeared.
And presently from a hamlet of some Arcadian valley, with a sound of idle song, Arcadian maidens came.
And, when they saw there, suddenly in the twilight, that old recumbent god, they stopped in their running and whispered among themselves. “How silly he looks,” they said, and thereat they laughed a little.
And at the sound of their laughter Pan leaped up and the gravel flew from his hooves.
And, for as long as the travellers stood and listened, the crags and the hilltops of Arcady rang with the sounds of pursuit.
The Sphinx at Giza
I saw the other day the Sphinx’s painted face.
She had painted her face in order to ogle Time.
And he has spared no other painted face in all the world but hers.
Delilah was younger than she, and Delilah is dust. Time hath loved nothing but this worthless painted face.
I do not care that she is ugly, nor that she has painted her face, so that she only lure his secret from Time.
Time dallies like a fool at her feet when he should be smiting cities.
Time never wearies of her silly smile.
There are temples all about her that he has forgotten to spoil.
I saw an old man go by, and Time never touched him.
Time that has carried away the seven gates of Thebes!
She has tried to bind him with ropes of eternal sand, she had hoped to oppress him with the Pyramids.
He lies there in the sand with his foolish hair all spread about her paws.
If she ever finds his secret we will put out his eyes, so that he shall find no more our beautiful things—there are lovely gates in Florence that I fear he will carry away.
We have tried to bind him with song and with old customs, but they only held him for a little while, and he has always smitten us and mocked us.
When he is blind he shall dance to us and make sport.
Great clumsy Time shall stumble and dance, who liked to kill little children, and can hurt even the daisies no longer.
Then shall our children laugh at him who slew Babylon’s winged bulls, and smote great numbers of the gods and fairies—when he is shorn of his hours and his years.
We will shut him up in the Pyramid of Cheops, in the great chamber where the sarcophagus is. Thence we will lead him out when we give our feasts. He shall ripen our corn for us and do menial work.
We will kiss thy painted face, O Sphinx, if thou wilt betray to us Time.
And yet I fear that in his ultimate anguish he may take hold blindly of the world and the moon, and slowly pull down upon him the House of Man.
The Hen
All along the farmyard gables the swallows sat a-row, twittering uneasily to one another, telling of many things, but thinking only of Summer and the South, for Autumn was afoot and the North wind waiting.
And suddenly one day they were all quite gone. And everyone spoke of the swallows and the South.
“I think I shall go South myself next year,” said a hen.
And the year wore on and the swallows came again, and the year wore on and they sat again on the gables, and all the poultry discussed the departure of the hen.
And very early one morning, the wind being from the North, the swallows all soared suddenly and felt the wind in their wings; and a strength came upon them and a strange old knowledge and a more than human faith, and flying high they left the smoke of our cities and small remembered eaves, and saw at last the huge and homeless sea, and steering by grey sea-currents went southward with the wind. And going South they went by glittering fog-banks and saw old islands lifting their heads above them; they saw the slow quests of the wandering ships, and divers seeking pearls, and lands at war, till there came in view the mountains that they sought and the sight of the peaks they knew; and they descended into an austral valley, and saw Summer sometimes sleeping and sometimes singing song.
“I think the wind is about right,” said the hen; and she spread her wings and ran out of the poultry-yard. And she ran fluttering out on to the road and some way down it until she came to a garden.
At evening she came back panting.
And in the poultry-yard she told the poultry how she had gone South as far as the high road, and saw the great world’s traffic going by, and came to lands where the potato grew, and saw the stubble upon which men live, and at the end of the road had found a garden, and there were roses in it—beautiful roses!—and the gardener himself was there with his braces on.
“How extremely interesting,” the poultry said, “and what a really beautiful description!”
And the Winter wore away, and the bitter months went by, and the Spring of the year appeared, and the swallows came again.
“We have been to the South,” they said, “and the valleys beyond the sea.”
But the poultry would not agree that there was a sea in the South: “You should hear our hen,” they said.
Wind and Fog
“Way for us,” said the North Wind as he came down the sea on an errand of old Winter.
And he saw before him the grey silent fog that lay along the tides.
“Way for us,” said the North Wind, “O ineffectual fog, for I am Winter’s leader in his age-old war with the ships. I overwhelm them suddenly in my strength, or drive upon them the huge seafaring bergs. I cross an ocean while you move a mile. There is mourning in inland places when
