John Dickson Bruns, M.D.
“Great Pan is dead!” so cried an airy tongue
To one who, drifting down Calabria’s shore,
Heard the last knell, in starry midnight rung,
Of the old Oracles, dumb for evermore.
A low wail ran along the shuddering deep,
And as, far off, its flaming accents died,
The awe-struck sailors, startled from their sleep,
Gazed, called aloud: no answering voice replied;
Nor ever will–the angry Gods have fled,
Closed are the temples, mute are all the shrines,
The fires are quenched, Dodona’s growth is dead,
The Sibyl’s leaves are scattered to the winds.
No mystic sentence will they bear again,
Which, sagely spelled, might ward a nation’s doom;
But we have left us still some god-like men,
And some great voices pleading from the tomb.
If we would heed them, they might save us yet,
Call up some gleams of manhood in our breasts,
Truth, valor, justice, teach us to forget
In a grand cause our selfish interests.
But we have fallen on evil times indeed,
When public faith is but the common shame,
And private morals held an idiot’s creed,
And old-world honesty an empty name.
And lust, and greed, and gain are all our arts!
The simple lessons which our father’s taught
Are scorned and jeered at; in our sordid marts
We sell the faith for which they toiled and fought.
Each jostling each in the mad strife for gold,
The weaker trampled by the unrecking throng
Friends, honor, country lost, betrayed, or sold,
And lying blasphemies on every tongue.
Cant for religion, sounding words for truth,
Fraud leads to fortune, gelt for guilt atones,
No care for hoary age or tender youth,
For widows’ tears or helpless orphans’ groans.
The people rage, and work their own wild will,
They stone the prophets, drag their highest down,
And as they smite, with savage folly still
Smile at their work, those dead eyes wear no frown.
The sage of “Drainfield”[1] tills a barren soil,
And reaps no harvest where he sowed the seed,
He has but exile for long years of toil;
Nor voice in council, though his children bleed.
And never more shall “Redcliffs”[2] oaks rejoice,
Now bowed with grief above their master’s bier;
Faction and party stilled that mighty voice,
Which yet could teach us wisdom, could we hear.
And “Woodland’s”[3] harp is mute: the gray, old man
Broods by his lonely hearth and weaves no song;
Or, if he sing, the note is sad and wan,
Like the pale face of one who’s suffered long.
So all earth’s teachers have been overborne
By the coarse crowd, and fainting; droop or die;
They bear the cross, their bleeding brows the thorn,
And ever hear the clamor–“Crucify!”
Oh, for a man with godlike heart and brain!
A god in stature, with a god’s great will.
And fitted to the time, that not in vain
Be all the blood we’re spilt and yet must spill.
Oh, brothers! friends! shake off the Circean spell!
Rouse to the dangers of impending fate!
Grasp your keen swords, and all may yet be well–
More gain, more pelf, and it will be, too late!
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Analysis (AI Assisted)
This poem opens with a classical image that immediately signals loss: the death of Pan and the silence of the old oracles. That scene is not nostalgia for pagan religion so much as a way to describe a world where guiding voices have vanished. The poem uses that moment as a hinge, moving from myth into a blunt assessment of modern moral collapse. What matters is not that the gods are gone, but that nothing worthy has replaced them.
The speaker suggests that societies once believed they were accountable to something larger than appetite or profit. Oracles, temples, and sacred groves represented limits, warnings, and standards. With those gone, the poem argues, people are left to listen only to themselves. The sea’s wail and the stunned sailors emphasize how sudden and unsettling this silence feels. No answer comes back when they call out, and that absence echoes through the rest of the poem.
From there, the poem turns sharply toward social criticism. It claims that while divine voices are gone, human ones still exist—“god-like men” and “great voices pleading from the tomb.” These are moral teachers, statesmen, thinkers, and elders whose words could still matter if anyone chose to listen. The tragedy, as the poem frames it, is not that guidance is unavailable, but that it is ignored. Truth, justice, and sacrifice are presented as old lessons that remain usable, yet unwanted.
The strongest part of the poem is its sustained attack on greed and public dishonesty. The language becomes harsher and more direct as it lists what has replaced older values: money over honor, clever fraud over integrity, empty religious language over real belief. The poem’s anger is aimed less at enemies than at neighbors and fellow citizens. It describes a society that tramples the weak, forgets the old, and shrugs at suffering so long as profit continues to flow.
The references to specific figures and places—thinly veiled through nicknames—reinforce the sense that real leaders and thinkers have been pushed aside. They are exiled, silenced, or left to age in obscurity while factions and crowds dominate public life. These figures are not portrayed as perfect, but as necessary voices lost to noise, resentment, and political division. Their absence leaves the culture poorer and more reckless.
The poem also shows deep frustration with popular movements. “The people” are not celebrated here; they are described as impulsive, cruel, and easily swayed. The image of crowds stoning prophets and smiling while doing it suggests moral blindness rather than righteous anger. This distrust of mass opinion reflects fear that democracy without character becomes destructive rather than liberating.
In its closing section, the poem shifts from lament to demand. It calls for a leader of unusual strength, intelligence, and moral force, someone capable of matching the crisis of the moment. This desire borders on desperation. The speaker seems convinced that ordinary virtues are no longer enough and that without decisive action, all previous sacrifice will have been wasted.
The final warning ties everything together. The poem insists that delay and continued obsession with gain will make recovery impossible. Swords are invoked not as symbols of conquest, but as last tools of preservation. Whether one agrees with its conclusions or not, the poem captures a mood of exhaustion, anger, and fear that often accompanies periods of war and social upheaval.
As a whole, the poem is less about ancient gods than about modern failure. Its strength lies in how it connects moral decay, political chaos, and the loss of trusted voices into a single argument. It does not comfort the reader. It accuses, urges, and warns, leaving behind a sense that collapse is not mysterious or inevitable, but the result of choices repeatedly made and repeatedly defended.