Corycian cave sat in a
row six noble forms with the aspect of mortals, but the countenances of
Gods. These the dreamer recognised from images of them which she had
beheld, and she knew that they were none else than the divine Maeonides,
the Avernian Dante, the more than mortal Shakespeare, the
chaos-exploring Milton, the cosmic Goethe, and the Musaean Keats. These
were those messengers whom the Gods had sent to tell men that Pan had
passed not away, but only slept; for it is in poetry that Gods speak to
men. Then spake the Thunderer:

"O daughter, for, being one of my endless line, thou art indeed my
daughter, behold upon ivory thrones of honour the august messengers that
Gods have sent down, that in the words and the writings of men there may
still be some trace of divine beauty. Other bards have men justly
crowned with enduring laurels, but these hath Apollo crowned, and these
have I set in places apart, as mortals who have spoken the language of
the Gods. Long have we dreamed in lotos-gardens beyond the West, and
spoken only through our dreams; but the time approaches when our voices
shall not be silent. It is a time of awaking and of change. Once more
hath Phaeton ridden low, searing the fields and drying the streams. In
Gaul lone nymphs with disordered hair weep beside fountains that are no
more, and pine over rivers turned red with the blood of mortals. Ares
and his train have gone forth with the madness of Gods, and have
returned, Deimos and Phobos glutted with unnatural delight. Tellus moans
with grief, and the faces of men are as the faces of the Erinyes, even
as when Astraea fled to the skies, and the waves of our bidding
encompassed all the land saving this high peak alone. Amidst this chaos,
prepared to herald his coming yet to conceal his arrival, even now
toileth our latest-born messenger, in whose dreams are all the images
which other messengers have dreamed before him. He it is that we have
chosen to blend into one glorious whole all the beauty that the world
hath known before, and to write words wherein shall echo all the wisdom
and the loveliness of the past. He it is who shall proclaim our return,
and sing of the days to come when Fauns and Dryads shall haunt their
accustomed groves in beauty. Guided was our choice by those who now sit
before the Corycian grotto on thrones of ivory, and in whose songs thou
shalt hear notes of sublimity by which years hence thou shall know the
greater messenger when he