Chapter 15 - Page 2

standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from th4e sea,
And hear old Tritou blow his wreathed horn." Schiller, in his poem The Gods of Greece, expresses his regret
for the overthrow of the beautiful mythology of ancient times in
a way which has called forth an answer from a Christian poetess,
Mrs. Browning, in her poem called The Dead Pan. The two
following verses are a specimen: "By your beauty which confesses
Some chief Beauty conquering you,
By our grand heroic guesses
Through your falsehood at the True,
We will weep NOT! Earth shall roll
Heir to each god's aureole,
And Pan is dead. "Earth outgrows the mythic fancies
Sung beside her in her youth;
And those debonaire romances
Sound but dull beside the truth.
Phoebus' chariot course is run!
Look up poets, to the sun!
Pan, Pan is dead." These lines are founded on an early Christian tradition that when
the heavenly host told the shepherds at Bethlehem of the birth of
Christ, a deep groan, heard through all the isles of Greece, told
that the great Pan was dead, and that all the royalty of Olympus
was dethroned, and the several deities were sent wandering in
cold and darkness. So Milton, in his Hymn to the Nativity: "The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
>From haunted spring and dale,
Edged with poplar pale,
The parting genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-enwoven tresses torn,
The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn."

ERISICHTHON Erisichthon was a profane person and a despiser of the gods. On
one occasion he presumed to violate with the axe a grove sacred
to Ceres. There stood in this grove a venerable oak, so large
that it seemed a wood in itself, its ancient trunk towering
aloft, whereon votive garlands were often hung and inscriptions
carved expressing the gratitude of suppliants to the nymph of the
tree. Often had the Dryads danced round it hand in hand. Its
trunk measured fifteen cubits round, and it overtopped the other
trees as they overtopped the shrubbery. But for all that,
Erisichthon saw no reason why he should spare it, and he ordered
his servants to cut it down. When he saw them hesitate, he
snatched an axe from one, and thus impiously exclaimed, :"I care
not whether it be a tree beloved of the Goddess or not; were it
the goddess herself it should come down, if it stood in my way."
So saying, he lifted the axe, and the oak seemed to shudder and
utter a groan. When the first blow fell upon the trunk, blood
flowed from the wound. All the bystanders were horror-struck,
and one of them ventured to remonstrate and hold back the fatal
axe.