rly full and smooth,
and the heads of the best of them rustle back with a profusion of
flaxen flowerage, remarkably agreeable to the touch. I broke one as
your Highness approached. But the wind, or some goblin, bore it
from me. This curious place seems full of earth-spirits.

PHOEBUS.

You must study them, too, Pan. That will supply you with another
object.

PAN.

But the marsh water has a property unknown to the Olympian springs.
I suspect it of being poisoned. After standing long in it, I found
myself troubled with aching in the shank, from knee to hoof. If
this is repeated, my studies of reed-life will be made dolorously
difficult.

PHOEBUS.

It must now be part of your pleasure to husband your enjoyments.
You have always rolled in the twinkle of the vine-leaves, hot
enough and not too hot, with grapes--immense musky clusters--just
within your reach. If you think of it philosophically----

PAN.

How, sire?

PHOEBUS.

Philosophically.... Well, if you think of it sensibly, you will
see that there was a certain dreariness in this uniformity of
satisfaction. Rather amusing, surely, to find the cluster
occasionally spring up out of reach, to find the polished waist
of the reed slip from your hands? Occasionally, of course; just
enough to give a zest to pursuit.

PAN.

Ah! there was pursuit in Ladon, but it was pursuit which always
closed easily in capture. What I am afraid of is that here capture
may prove the exception. Your Highness ... but a slight family
connection and our adversities are making me strangely familiar....

PHOEBUS.

Speak on, my good Pan.

PAN.

Your Highness was once something of a botanist?

PHOEBUS.

A botanist? Ah, scarcely! A little arboriculture, the laurel; a
little horticulture, the sun-flower. Those varieties seem entirely
absent here, and I have no thought of replacing them.

PAN.

The last thing I should dream of suggesting would be a _hortus
siccus_....

PHOEBUS.

And I was never a consistent collector. There are reeds everywhere,
you fortunate goat-foot, but even in Olympus I was the creature of
a fastidious selection.

PAN.

The current of the thick and punctual blood never left me liable
to the distractions of choice.

PHOEBUS.

I congratulate you, Pan, upon your temperament, and I recommend
to you a further pursuit of the attainable.

[PAN _makes a profound obeisance and disappears in the woodland_.
PHOEBUS _watches him depart, an