RPO -- Percy Bysshe Shelley : Hymn of Pan

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Hymn of Pan

1From the forests and highlands

2 We come, we come;

3From the river-girt islands,

4 Where loud waves are dumb

5 Listening my sweet pipings.

6The wind in the reeds and the rushes,

7 The bees on the bells of thyme,

8The birds on the myrtle bushes,

9 The cicale above in the lime,

10And the lizards below in the grass,

11Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,

12 Listening my sweet pipings.

13Liquid Peneus was flowing,

14 And all dark Tempe lay

15In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing

16 The light of the dying day,

17 Speeded by my sweet pipings.

18The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,

19 And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves,

20To the edge of the moist river-lawns,

21 And the brink of the dewy caves,

22And all that did then attend and follow,

23Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,

24 With envy of my sweet pipings.

25I sang of the dancing stars,

26 I sang of the daedal Earth,

27And of Heaven, and the giant wars,

28 And Love, and Death, and Birth--

29 And then I chang'd my pipings,

30Singing how down the vale of Maenalus

31 I pursu'd a maiden and clasp'd a reed.

32Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!

33 It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed.

34All wept, as I think both ye now would,

35If envy or age had not frozen your blood,

36 At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

Notes

1] It and the Hymn of Apollo were written for a scene in Mary Shelley's verse-drama Midas where Apollo and Pan sing competing songs before old Tmolus as judge. Tmolus awards the victory to Apollo, but Midas, who has secretly overheard the competition, prefers Pan.

5, 12] Listening my sweet pipings. Mrs. Shelley's published version inserts "to," but a fair copy among Shelley's MSS. insists on a transitive use of "listening" in both lines.

13-14] Peneus, Tempe, Pelion: a river in Thessaly, a valley through which it flows, and a neighbouring mountain.

18-19] Minor pastoral deities of forest and river.

31] Pan pursued the nymph Syrinx to a river bank, but when he tried to embrace her found himself clasping reeds. From these he made the pipes of Pan. The story is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

33] Both ye: Tmolus and Apollo.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems, ed. Mary Shelley (1824). Cf. Posthumous Poems of Shelley. Mary Shelley's Fair Copy Book, Bodleian MS. Shelley Adds. d. 9, Collated with the Holographs and the Printed Texts, ed. Irving Massey (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1969). PR 5403 M27 ROBA.
First publication date: 1824
RPO poem editor: M. T. Wilson
RP edition: 3RP 2.579.
Recent editing: 4:2002/4/24

Composition date: 1820
Rhyme: ababcdedeffc

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