Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 11/Lost Syrinx
LOST SYRINX.
(b.c. 100.)
Pan was old, and bleared, and wan,
Bent with the weight of thousands of years,
We peasants bad long ceased worshipping him,
Or bringing him kids, or lambs, or steers;
No turf was now piled for such offerings,
On down, or in forest, by pools or springs.
Yet still, where the kingfisher flitted and dived,
Down by the rippling pebbly shallows,
He sat, still watching the bulrushes bow
To a spectre line of half-starved willows,
From under a chapp'd and dodder'd tree,
Backed with old age and with penury.
The yellow flag flowers knee-deep spread,
All in bloom and so golden bright,
The swallows were weaving over the pools,
The cast was flushing with crimson light;
The bees were in the wild rose sipping,
The fawns down every dell were tripping.
The shepherds piped from the distant hill.
The wild notes rang through the sloping copse,
And all the hyacinth bells began
To chime together, as through the tops
Of the myrtle bushes a whisper came,
Breathing a well-remember'd name.
For it was Spring, and the earth was glad,
The blue sky laugh'd with the dimpling cloud,
The streams ran fast, and the birds began
Their songs, as merry as they were loud,
And every leaf on the aspen-tree
Seem'd to be dancing in ecstasy.
With feeble eye, and a languid ear,
The old god listen'd, as soft there rang
The song of a thrush, from the ilex top,
Flutiug the name that it ever sang—
It was Syrinx' soul that had come to see
Pan in his age and his misery.
The herdsmen shouted, but still that bird,
High on the topmost ilex spray,
Told of love and hope and the golden age
Blent in one innocent roundelay.
'Twas strange, that where Pan sat, thickest grew
A little flower of the heaven's own hue.
"Forget-me-not" they call that flower;
And Pan, when the breeze stole through the reeds
Arose and cull'd the tallest tube
That in the soft ooze thirsty feeds,
And fashion'd a pipe, then, under a fir,
Sat and sang all that day of her.
He play'd! and the deep notes gurgling came,
As from the throat of a nightingale,
With his youthful skill his fingers sped,
And the music flow'd through the wooded vale,
The wild goat rested beside the spring,
The birds were all silent listening.
He sang of the better, earlier world,
Ere Astræa pass'd away,
Of the syrens and satyrs, and dryads and nymphs
That in sea and in forest play,
And, last of all, of that maid so fair,
Who wore no crown but her golden hair.
Syrinx, whom Jove, in his anger, changed
To those tall, green, wavering, trembling reeds,
That, down where yon tide flows broad and deep,
Are watching their shadows, till steers and steeds,
Coming to drink at the ford hard by,
Tread them to death so heedlessly.
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At eve Pan rose, and that little blue flower,
The Forget-me-not, he pluck'd with care,
And placed on his bosom, in memory
Of Syrinx, and love that she would not share;
Then into the depth of the forest strode,
Careless of path and heedless of road.
Whither he went no Greek can tell;
But, in April evenings and autumn eves
We sometimes hear, or think we hear,
His feeble song ooze through the leaves,
For the old, old Pan, still brooding, stays,
Lamenting these lingering latter days.