And setting the wildest rumours afloat,
To set the fool-mob a-shiver.

He frightened the shepherds, the old god Pan,[1]
Him of the reeds by the river;
Afeared of his faun-face, Arcadians ran;
Unsoothed by the pipes he so deftly could play,
The shepherds and travellers scurried away
From his face by forest or river.

And back to us, sure, comes the great god Pan,
With his pipes from the reeds by the river;
Starting a scare, as the goat-god can,
Making a Man a mere wind-swayed reed,
And moving the mob like a leaf indeed
By a chill wind set a-quiver.

He finds it sport, does our new god Pan
(As did he of the reeds by the river),
To take all the pith from the heart of a man,
To make him a sheep--though a tiger in spring,--
A cruel, remorseless, poor, cowardly thing,
With the whitest of cheeks--and liver!

"Who said I was dead?" laughs the new god Pan
(Laughs till his faun-cheeks quiver),
"I'm still at my work, on a new-fangled plan.
Scare is my business; I think I succeed,
When the Mob at my minstrelsy shakes like a reed,
And I mock, as the pale fools shiver."