There is no man, this deifying day, But feels the primal blessing in his blood. There is no woman but disdains— The sacred impulse of the May Brightening like sex made sunshine through her veins— To vail the ensigns of her womanhood. None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes, Bounteous in looks of her delicious best, On her inviolable quest: These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets those, But all desirable and frankly fair, As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst, And in the knowledge went imparadised! For look! a magical influence everywhere, Look how the liberal and transfiguring air Washes this inn of memorable meetings, This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings, Till, through its jocund loveliness of length A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore, A brimming reach of beauty met with strength, It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream, Some vision multitudinous and agleam, Of happiness as it shall be evermore! Praise God for giving Through this His messenger among the days His word the life He gave is thrice-worth living! For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan— Not dead, not dead, as impotent dreamers feigned, But the gay genius of a million Mays Renewing his beneficent endeavour!— Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed and reigned Since in the dim blue dawn of time The universal ebb-and-flow began, To sound his ancient music, and prevails, By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme, Here in this radiant and immortal street Lavishly and omnipotently as ever In the open hills, the undissembling dales, The laughing-places of the juvenile earth. For lo! the wills of man and woman meet, Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared, As once in Eden’s prodigal bowers befell, To share his shameless, elemental mirth In one great act of faith: while deep and strong, Incomparably nerved and cheered, The enormous heart of London joys to beat To the measures of his rough, majestic song; The lewd, perennial, overmastering spell That keeps the rolling universe ensphered, And life, and all for which life lives to long, Wanton and wondrous and for ever well. RHYMES AND RHYTHMS 1889–1892 _PROLOGUE_ _Something is dead_ . . . _The grace of sunset solitudes_, _the march_ _Of the solitary moon_, _the pomp and power_ _Of round on round of shining soldier-stars_ _Patrolling space_, _the bounties of the sun_— _Sovran_, _tremendous_, _unimaginable_— _The multitudinous friendliness of the sea_, _Possess no more—no more_.