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What was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the dragon-fly on the river. He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep cool bed of the river: The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon-fly had fled away, Ere he brought it out of the river. High on the shore sat the great god Pan, While turbidly flowed the river; And hacked and hewed as a great god can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river. He cut it short, did the great god Pan, (How tall it stood in the river!) Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, And notched the poor dry empty thing In holes, as he sat by the river. "This is the way," laughed the great god Pan, (Laughed while he sat by the river) "The only way, since gods began To make sweet music, they could succeed." Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river. Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river. Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man: The true gods sigh for the cost and pain - For the reed which grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds in the river.
I was curious who the great God Pan was so I looked it up on the internet. Pan was from the Greek religion and he was the god of sheperds and flocks. He inhabited the wild mountains and he hunted and listened to rustic music. His name comes from the word paein, probably latin. It means meaning to pasture. He is not a man but has hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat. You could say that he looks like a faun. He is widely recognized as god of the fields, groves and wooded glens. Because of this Pan has a lot to do with fertility, and the season spring. Pan is also in Roman mythology, his counterpart was Faunus. This was a nature spirtit who was the father of Fauna. In the 18th and 19th centuries Pan was really ingrained and was a signigicant figure in the romantic movement in western europe.
The great god pan is also a novella by Arthur Machen. He is obviously a character to be involved in so many books and poems.
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