C’est le bon Pan, le grand pasteur (....) Le temps
concorde avec cette interprétation qui est la mienne, car ce Pan très bon,
très grand, notre unique sauveur, mourut près de Jérusalem, sous le règne
de Tibère César à Rome.
-Rabelais, 1532: Gargantua & Pantagruel; Quart Livre

For Pan himselfe was their inheritaunce,  
And little them served for their mayntenaunce.  
The shepheards God so wel them guided,  
That of nought they were unprovided,  
Butter enough, honye, milke, and whay,          
And their flockes fleeces, them to araye.
[Great Pan is Christ, the very God of all shepheards, which calleth himselfe the greate and good shepherd. The name is most rightly (me thinkes) applyed to him, for Pan signifieth all, or omnipotent, which is onely the Lord Jesus.]
 -Edmund Spenser 1579: The Shepheardes Calender; ÆGLOGA QUINTA Maye

Take thou no scorn to wear the horn
It was the crest ere you were born:
Thy father’s father wore it,
And thy father bore it:
The horn, the horn, the lusty horn
‘Tis not a thing to laugh to scorn.
-Shakespeare, 1599: As You Like It: Act 4, Scene 2

Pan's Rhyton
                                (for A.G.)

Cherub smoke surrounding
lips put to the pipe
wanton shade, charged air
stag breath, beechnut
honeycombing hair
where horn would curl unfashioned
rampant with newborn needs
wandering neath willow
willful for the reeds

Dreadful festive frantic power
force, pheromone & fur
revel in the fingering of figures
& kiss of embouchure

Syrinx serene
ninny haunched old urgings lean
molesting unforgotten Dream
tripping tongues of dogma
to stutter sermons in the stream
By the ambrosial beard of brine & honey mingled!
sweet release & escapade!
shivering cape of sparrows
share prayers & passion's played

Whistling past the Rune
whose veins would poet trace
nymph-sweat alphabet
beneath the shadow of the thrill
the threat
prance cross palimpsest
Echo's thine
O, Thrice Blest!

Wild, the refuge
of rough read Pan's
hours & season's endless dance
stamping hoof at the edge of Dawn
Now's At Last!
All woe, be gone!
5/1/12