The Return of Pan
I stood upon the balcony with my brand new bride
the clink of bells came drifting down the mountainside
when in our sight
something moved
lightning eyed
and cloven hooved
The Great God Pan is alive!
He moves amid the modern world in disguise
It's possible to look into his immortal eyes
He's like a man you'd meet
anyplace
until you recognise
that ancient face
The Great God Pan is alive!
At sea on a ship in a thunderstorm
on the very night that Christ was born
a sailor heard from overhead
a might voice cry "Pan is dead!"
so follow Christ as best you can
Pan is dead! Long Live Pan!
From the olden days and up through all the years
from Arcadia to the stone fields of Inisheer
Some say the Gods are just a myth
but guess who I've been dancing with!
The Great God Pan is Alive! |
Kyoto,
and the Ryoanji rock garden
Zen resources at MetaLab
The Gateless
Gate, from Mumon
The
Ten Bulls, from Kakuan
Buddhanet
Access to Insight Readings in Theravada Buddhism
The Encyclopedia Mythica
The Mahabharata
|
A Musical Instrument
E.B.Browning
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. |
