too
often diverted from some serious literary business with the moon or the
morning stars, or a red squirrel who is the familiar spirit of my
wood-pile, or having my thoughts carried out to sea by the river which
runs so freshly and so truantly, with so strong a current of temptation,
a hundred yards away from my window--I often think that the strong
necessity that compelled me to do my work, to ply my pen and inkpot out
here in the leafy, blue-eyed wilderness, instead of doing it by
typewriter in some forty-two-storey building in the city, is one of
those encouraging signs of the times which links one with the great
brotherhood of men and women that have heard the call of the great god
Pan, as he sits by the river--

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!

And I go on thinking to this effect: that this impulse that has come to
so many of us, and has, incidentally, wrought such a harmony in our
lives, is something more than duck-shooting, trout-fishing,
butterfly-collecting, or a sentimental passion for sunsets, but is
indeed something not so very far removed from religion, romantic
religion. At all events, it is something that makes us happy, and keeps
us straight. That combination of results can only come by the
satisfaction of the undeniable religious instinct in all of us: an
instinct that seeks goodness, but seeks happiness too. Now, there are
creeds by which you can be good without being happy; and creeds by which
you can be happy without being good. But, perhaps, there is only one
creed by which you can be both at once--the creed of the growing grass,
and the blue sky and the running river, the creed of the dog-wood and
the skunk-cabbage, the creed of the red-wing and the blue heron--the
creed of the great god Pan.

Pan, being one of the oldest of the gods, might well, in an age eager
for novelty, expect to be the latest fashion; but the revival of his
worship is something far more than a mere vogue. It was rumoured, as, of
course, we all know, early in the Christian era, that he was dead. The
pilot Thomas, ran the legend, as told by Plutarch, sailing near Pascos,
with a boatful of merchants, heard in the twilight a mighty voice
calling from the land, bidding him proclaim to all the world that Pan
was dead. "Pan is dead!"--three times ran the strange shuddering cry
through the darkness, as though the very earth itself wailed the