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Kenneth Slessor - Pan at Lane Cove
Work rating: Low

SCALY with poison, bright with flame, 
 Great fungi steam beside the gate, 
 Run tentacles through flagstone cracks, 
 Or claw beyond, where meditate 
 Wet poplars on a pitchy lawn. 
 Some seignior of colonial fame 
 Has planted here a stone-cut faun 
 Whose flute juts like a frozen flame. 
 O lonely faun, what songs are these 
 For skies where no Immortals hide? 
 Why finger in this dour abode 
 Those Pan-pipes girdled at your side? 
 Your Gods, and Hellas too, have passed, 
 Forsaken are the Cyclades, 
 And surely, faun, you are the last 
 To pipe such ancient songs as these. 
 Yet, blow your stone-lipped flute and blow 
 Those red-and-silver pipes of Pan. 
 Cold stars are bubbling round the moon, 
 Which, like some golden Indiaman 
 Disgorged by waterspouts and blown 
 Through heaven`s archipelago, 
 Drives orange bows by clouds of stone . . . 
 Blow, blow your flute, you stone boy, blow! 
 And, Chiron, pipe your centaurs out, 
 The night has looped a smoky scarf 
 Round campanili in the town, 
 And thrown a cloak about Clontarf. 
 Now earth is ripe for Pan again, 
 Barbaric ways and Paynim rout, 
 And revels of old Samian men. 
 O Chiron, pipe your centaurs out. 
 This garden by the dark Lane Cove 
 Shall spark before thy music dies 
 With silver sandals; all thy gods 
 Be conjured from Ionian skies. 
 Those poplars in a fluting-trice 
 They`ll charm into an olive-grove 
 And dance a while in Paradise 
 Like men of fire above Lane Cove.
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