Syrinx
“Poor nymph—poor Pan—how he did weep to find
Naught but a lovely sighing of the wind
Along the reedy stream; a half-heard strain,
Full of sweet desolation, balmy pain.”
—Keats.
IN Greece there dwelt in days gone by
A maiden huntress, passing fair,
Who lived beneath the open sky
And dearly loved the open air.
Although it really seems a shame
To call a lady such a name,
This lovely nymph was called, methinks,
S-y-r-i-n-x, Syrinx.
Syrinx, while following the Chase,
Was seen one day by ardent Pan,
A god of most repulsive face,
A sort of burlesque on a man.
If we can trust what ancients wrote,
Poor Pan was really half a goat—
Not like the Peter Pan to-day
The Misses Chase and Adams play.
When Pan began swift to pursue,
The maiden in her terror fled,
(I cannot blame her much, can you?)
And ran ’till she was almost dead;
But friendly spirits in a stream
Had heard and understood her scream,
And they had changed her in a wink
To reeds upon the river’s brink.
The god, though thwarted in his scheme
To win the nymph, was not dismayed.
He plucked the reeds beside the stream
And from them a “Syrinx” he made.
The shepherd’s pipes—so came to man
The music of the Pipes o’ Pan.
The Moral? There is none; you see
Pan was, as poets all agree,
A most immoral deity!