Classic Poem

My pretty lad, quoth Thetis, thou dost well
To fear the loss of thy dear Philocel.
But tell me, sure, what may that shepherd be?
Or if it lie in us to set him tree,
Or if with you yond people touch'd with woe
Under the self-same load of sorrow go.
Fair queen, replied the swain, one is the cause
That moves our grief, and those kind shepherds draws
To yonder rock. Thy more than mortal spirit
May give a good beyond our power to merit;
And therefore please to hear while I shall tell
The hapless fate of hopeless Philocel.
Whilom great Pan, the father of our flocks,
Lov'd a fair lass so famous for her locks,
That in her time all women first begun
To lay their looser tresses to the sun;
And theirs whose hue to hers was not agreeing,
Were still roll'd up as hardly worth the seeing.
Fondly have some been led to think that man
Music's invention first of all began
From the dull hammer's stroke; since well we know
From sure tradition that hath taught us so,
Pan, sitting once to sport him with his fair,
Mark'd the intention of the gentle air,
In the sweet sound her chaste words brought along,
Fram'd by the repercussion of her tongue:
And from that harmony begun the art
Which others (though unjustly) do impart
To bright Apollo from a meaner ground:
A sledge or parched nerves; mean things to found
So rare an art on; when there might be given
All earth for matter with the gyre of heaven.
To keep her slender fingers from the sun,
Pan through the pastures oftentimes hath run
To pluck the speckled foxgloves from their stem,
And on those fingers neatly placed them.
The honeysuckles would he often strip,
And lay their sweetness on her sweeter lip,
And then, as in reward of such his pain,
Sip from those cherries some of it again.
Some say that Nature, while this lovely maid
Liv'd on our plains, the teeming earth array'd
With damask roses in each pleasant place,
That men might liken somewhat to her face.
Others report: Venus, afraid her son
Might love a mortal as he once had done,
Preferr'd an earnest suit to highest Jove,
That he which bore the winged shafts of love,
Might be debarr'd his sight, which suit was sign'd,
And ever since the god of love is blind.
Hence is't he shoots his shafts so clean awry,
Men learn to love when they should learn to die;
And women, which before to love began
Man without wealth, love wealth without a man.
Great Pan of his kind nymph had the embracing
Long, yet too short a time. For as in tracing
These pithful rushes, such as are aloft
By those that rais'd them presently are brought
Beneath unseen: so in the love of Pan
(For gods in love do undergo as man),
She whose affection made him raise his song,
And, for her sport, the satyrs rude among
Tread wilder measures than the frolic guests,
That lift their light heels at Lyæus' feasts:
She by the light of whose quick-turning eye
He never read but of felicity:
She whose assurance made him more than Pan,
Now makes him far more wretched than a man.
For mortals in their loss have death a friend,
When gods have losses, but their loss no end.
It chanc'd one morn, clad in a robe of grey,
And blushing oft as rising to betray,
Entic'd this lovely maiden from her bed
(So when the roses have discovered
Their taintless beauties, flies the early bee
About the winding alleys merrily)
Into the wood, and 'twas her usual sport,
Sitting where most harmonious birds resort,
To imitate their warbling in a quill
Wrought by the hand of Pan, which she did fill
Half full with water: and with it hath made
The nightingale, beneath a sullen shade,
To chant her utmost lay, nay, to invent
New notes to pass the other's instrument,
And, harmless soul, ere she would leave that strife,
Sung her last song, and ended with her life;
So gladly choosing, as do other some,
Rather to die than live and be o'ercome.
But as in autumn (when birds cease their notes,
And stately forests don their yellow coats;
When Ceres' golden locks are nearly shorn,
And mellow fruit from trees are roughly torn),
A little lad set on a bank to shale
The ripen'd nuts pluck'd in a woody vale,
Is frighted thence, of his dear life afeard,
By some wild bull loud bellowing for the herd:
So while the nymph did earnestly contest
Whether the birds or she recorded best,
A ravenous wolf, bent eager to his prey,
Rush'd from a thievish brake; and making way,
The twined thorns did crackle one by one,
As if they gave her warning to be gone.
A rougher gale bent down the lashing boughs,
To beat the beast from what his hunger vows.
When she (amaz'd) rose from her hapless seat
(Small is resistance where the fear is great),
And striving to be gone, with gaping jaws
The wolf pursues, and as his rending paws
Were like to seize, a holly bent between;
For which good deed his leaves are ever green.
Saw you a lusty mastive at the stake,
Thrown from a cunning bull, more fiercely make
A quick return? yet to prevent the gore
Or deadly bruise which he escap'd before,
Wind here and there, nay creep if rightly bred,
And proff'ring otherwhere, fight still at head:
So though the stubborn boughs did thrust him back,
(For Nature, loath so rare a jewel's wrack,
Seem'd as she here and there had plash'd a tree,
If possible to hinder destiny,)
The savage beast foaming with anger flies
More fiercely than before, and now he tries
By sleights to take the maid; as I have seen
A nimble tumbler on a burrow'd green,
Bend clean awry his course, yet give a check
And throw himself upon a rabbit's neck.
For as he hotly chas'd the love of Pan,
A herd of deer out of a thicket ran,
To whom he quickly turn'd, as if he meant
To leave the maid, but when she swiftly bent
Her race down to the plain, the swifter deer
He soon forsook; and now was got so near
That, all in vain, she turned to and fro
As well she could, but not prevailing so,
Breathless and weary calling on her love
With fearful shrieks that all the echoes move
To call him too, she fell down deadly wan,
And ends her sweet life with the name of Pan.