| |
| JUST where the Treasury’s marble front | |
| Looks over Wall Street’s mingled nations,— | |
| Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont | |
| To throng for trade and last quotations,— | |
| Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold | 5 |
| Outrival, in the ears of people, | |
| The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled | |
| From Trinity’s undaunted steeple;— | |
| |
| Even there I heard a strange, wild strain | |
| Sound high above the modern clamour, | 10 |
| Above the cries of greed and gain, | |
| The curbstone war, the auction’s hammer,— | |
| And swift, on Music’s misty ways, | |
| It led, from all this strife for millions, | |
| To ancient, sweet do-nothing days | 15 |
| Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians. | |
| |
| And as it stilled the multitude, | |
| And yet more joyous rose, and shriller, | |
| I saw the minstrel, where he stood | |
| At ease against a Doric pillar: | 20 |
| One hand a droning organ played, | |
| The other held a Pan’s-pipe (fashioned | |
| Like those of old) to lips that made | |
| The reeds give out that strain impassioned. | |
| |
| ’Twas Pan himself had wandered here | 25 |
| A-strolling through this sordid city, | |
| And piping to the civic ear | |
| The prelude of some pastoral ditty! | |
| The demigod had crossed the seas,— | |
| From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr | 30 |
| And Syracusan times,—to these | |
| Far shores and twenty centuries later. | |
| |
| A ragged cap was on his head: | |
| But—hidden thus—there was no doubting | |
| That, all with crispy locks o’erspread, | 35 |
| His gnarled horns were somewhere sprouting; | |
| His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes, | |
| Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them, | |
| And trousers, patched of divers hues, | |
| Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them. | 40 |
| |
| He filled the quivering reeds with sound, | |
| And o’er his mouth their changes shifted, | |
| And with his goat’s-eyes looked around | |
| Where’er the passing current drifted; | |
| And soon, as on Trinacrian hills | 45 |
| The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him, | |
| Even now the tradesmen from their tills, | |
| With clerks and porters, crowded near him. | |
| |
| The bulls and bears together drew | |
| From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley, | 50 |
| As erst, if pastorals be true, | |
| Came beasts from every wooded valley; | |
| The random passers stayed to list,— | |
| A boxer Ægon, rough and merry,— | |
| A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst | 55 |
| With Naïs at the Brooklyn Ferry. | |
| |
| A one-eyed Cyclops halted long | |
| In tattered cloak of army pattern, | |
| And Galatea joined the throng,— | |
| A blowsy, apple-vending slattern; | 60 |
| While old Silenus staggered out | |
| From some new-fangled lunch-house handy, | |
| And bade the piper, with a shout, | |
| To strike up Yankee Doodle Dandy! | |
| |
| A newsboy and a peanut-girl | 65 |
| Like little Fauns began to caper: | |
| His hair was all in tangled curl, | |
| Her tawny legs were bare and taper; | |
| And still the gathering larger grew, | |
| And gave its pence and crowded nigher, | 70 |
| While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew | |
| His pipe, and struck the gamut higher. | |
| |
| O heart of Nature, beating still | |
| With throbs her vernal passion taught her,— | |
| Even here, as on the vine-clad hill, | 75 |
| Or by the Arethusan water! | |
| New forms may fold the speech, new lands | |
| Arise within these ocean-portals, | |
| But Music waves eternal wands,— | |
| Enchantress of the souls of mortals! | 80 |
| |
| So thought I,—but among us trod | |
| A man in blue, with legal baton, | |
| And scoffed the vagrant demigod, | |
| And pushed him from the step I sat on. | |
| Doubting I mused upon the cry, | 85 |
| “Great Pan is dead!”—and all the people | |
| Went on their ways:—and clear and high | |
| The quarter sounded from the steeple. | |
| |
