The Urban Pan

The Urban Pan.
Bliss Carman
218.1

Once more the magic days are come
With stronger sun and milder air;
The shops are full of daffodils;
There’s golden leisure everywhere.
I heard my Lou this morning shout:
“Here comes the hurdy-gurdy man!”
And through the open window caught
The piping of the urban Pan.

I laid my wintry task aside,
And took a day to follow joy:
The trail of beauty and the call
That lured me when I was a boy.
I looked, and there looked up at me
A smiling, swarthy, hairy man
‘With kindling eye-and well I knew
The piping of the urban Pan.

aught my mood; his hat was off;
I tossed the ungrudged silver down.
The cunning vagrant, every year
He casts hih spell upon the town!

And we must fling him, old and young:
Coppera or nickels, as we can;
And every heart must leap to hear
The piping of the urban Pan.

The music swells and fades again,
And I in dreams am far away,
Where a bright river sparkles down
To meet a blue Ægean bay.
There, in the springtime of the world,
Are dancing fauns, and in their van
Is one who pipes a deathless tone- The earth-born and the urban Pan.

And so he follows down the block,
A troop of children in his train,
The light-foot dancers of the street
Enamored of the reedy strain.
I hear their laughter rise and ring
Above the noise of truck and van;
And down the mellow wind fades out
The piping of the urban Pan.