Lord Dunsany (Fifty One Tales) "The Death of Pan"

THE DEATH OF PAN

When travellers from London entered Arcady they lamented one to another
the death of Pan.

And anon they saw him lying stiff and still.

Horned Pan was still and the dew was on his fur; he had not the lookof a live
animal. And then they said, "It is true that Pan is dead."

And, standing melancholy by that huge prone body, they looked for long
time at memorable Pan.

And evening came and a small star appeared.

And presently from a hamlet of some Arcadian valley, with a sound of idle
song, Arcadian maidens came.

And, when they saw there, suddenly in the twilight, that old recumbent god,
they stopped in their running and whispered among themselves.
"How silly he looks," they said, and thereat they laughed a little.

And at the sound of their laughter Pan leaped up and the gravel flew from his hooves.

And, for as long as the travellers stood and listened, the crags and the hill-tops
of Arcady rang with the sounds of pursuit.

by Lord Dunsany

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Lord Dunsany (Exerpt from "Fifty One Tales")

THE ASSIGNATION

Fame singing in the highways, and trifling as she sang, with sordid adventurers,
passed the poet by.

And still the poet made for her little chaplets of song, to deck her forehead in the
courts of Time: and still she wore instead the worthless garlands, that boisterous
citizens flung to her in the ways, made out of perishable things.

And after a while whenever these garlands died the poet came to her with his
chaplets of song; and still she laughed at him and wore the worthless wreaths,
though they always died at evening.

And one day in his bitterness the poet rebuked her, and said to her:
"Lovely Fame, even in the highways and the by ways you have not foreborne
to laugh and shout and jest with worthless men, and I have toiled for you and
dreamed of you and you mock me and pass me by."

And Fame turned her back on him and walked away, but in departing she looked
over her shoulder and smiled at him as she had not smiled before, and, almost
speaking in a whisper, said:

"I will meet you in the graveyard at the back of the Workhouse in a hundred years."


by Lord Dunsany


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