The World’s Wit and Humor: An Encyclopedia in 15 Volumes. 1906.
Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833–1908)Pan in Wall Street
From “Poetical Works”
J
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
Outrival, in the ears of people,
The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled
From Trinity’s undaunted steeple—
Sound high above the modern clamor,
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
Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians.
And yet more joyous rose, and shriller,
I saw the minstrel, where he stood
At ease against a Doric pillar:
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.
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,
And Syracusan times—to these
Far shores and twenty centuries later.
But—hidden thus—there was no doubting
That, all with crispy locks o’erspread,
His gnarléd 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.
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
The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him,
Even now the tradesmen from their tills,
With clerks and porters, crowded near him.
From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley,
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
With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry.
In tattered cloak of army pattern,
And Galatea joined the throng—
A blowsy, apple-vending slattern;
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!
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,
While ay the shepherd-minstrel blew
His pipe, and struck the gamut higher.
With throbs her vernal passion taught her—
Even here, as on the vine-clad hill,
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!
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,
“Great Pan is dead!” and all the people
Went on their ways—and clear and high
The quarter sounded from the steeple.