Page:The story of Greece told to boys and girls.djvu/27

 and then sitting down he 'hacked and hewed, as a great god can,' at the slender reed. He made it hollow, and notched out holes, and lo! there was a flute ready for his use.

Sweet, piercing sweet was the music of Pan's pipe as the god placed his mouth upon the holes.

'Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river.'

On the hill-sides and in the fields of Hellas, the shepherds heard the music of their god and were merry, knowing that he was on his way to frolic and to dance among them.

Pan lived for many, many a long year; but there is a story which tells how on the first glad Christmas eve, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a traveller, as he passed Tarentum, the chief Greek city in Italy, heard a voice crying, 'The great god Pan is dead.'

And when this same Jesus had grown to be a Man, and 'hung for love's sake on a Cross,' one of our own women poets sings that all the old gods of Greece

'fell down moaning, Each from off his golden seat; All the false gods with a cry, Rendered up their deity, Pan, Pan was dead.'

And the reason that the old gods fell was that the strange Man upon the Cross was mightier than they. But in the days of ancient Greece the gods were alive and strong; of that the Hellenes were very sure.