Shrill, shrill, shrill, O Pan!
Your Panic-pipes, far from the river!
Deafening shrill, O Poster-Pan!
Turning a man to a timorous brute
With irrational fear. From your frantic flute
Good sense our souls deliver!

Men rush like the Gadaree swine, O Pan!
With contagious fear a-shiver,
They flock like _Panurge's_ poor sheep, O Pan!
What, what shall the merest of manhood quicken
In geese gregarious, panic-stricken
Like frighted fish in the river.

You sneer at the shame of them, Poster-Pan,
Poltroons of the pigeon-liver.
Your placards gibbet them, Poster-Pan,
Who crowd like curs in the cowardly crush,
Who flock like sheep in the brainless rush
With fear or greed a-shiver.

You are half a beast, O new god Pan!
To laugh (as you laughed by the river)
Making a brute-beast out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain
Of Civilisation, which seems but vain
When the prey of your Panic shiver!

[Footnote 1: Pan, the Arcadian forest and river-god, was held to