You will read in the great poems of Homer the story of the siege of Troy and the wanderings of Ulysses; and in the "Æneid" of Virgil--to my mind the very greatest of all poems--the whole story of Æneas. But my stories end where the great poets begin theirs. I seem, as I have said, to have been dreaming a long dream: and before I quite wake I see the gods growing fainter and fainter, year by year and century by century, while men and women believed in them less and less, until--when they were well-nigh forgotten, or thought of only as poets' fables--there came a great loud cry which made the whole world sigh and tremble:-- "PAN IS DEAD!" men heard all Nature cry; and they knew it to mean that the last of the gods was no more; that a new time had come for the world. And that same night a star rose into sight at Bethlehem, and stood over the manger where a young Child lay. And yet, gone and lost though the gods be, you will be very blind indeed if you never catch a glimpse of a Dryad in the woods or of an Oread on the hill; if you never think of Hercules when things seem against you and hard to understand; if you do not see in Perseus the true knight that a true man should strive to be. What more shall I say before I lay down my pen? Only that these stories are not nonsense--no, not one of them; that the more one thinks of them the wiser he is; and that I love them so much, and think so much of what made me begin them, that I cannot believe that I have come to the end. PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY OF PROPER NAMES. KEY TO DIACRITICAL MARKS ā as in fāte à as in senàte ă as in făt ä as in ärm a̤ as in a̤ll ȧ as in ȧsk ē as in mēte è as in èvent ĕ as in mĕt ẽ as in hẽr ī as in īce ì as in ìdea ĭ as in ĭt ĩ as in sĩr ō as in ōld ò as in òbey ŏ as in nŏt ô as in nôr ū as in ūse ù as in ùnite ŭ as in ŭp ụ as in pụll y = i c as in call ç as in çity ꞓ as in sꞓhool g as in go ġ as in caġe ṉ as in iṉk ph as in phantom æ and œ = e eu = ū s̝ as in his̝ All other unmarked consonants have their usual English sounds. Silent letters are italicized. Vowels when obscured and turned toward the neutral sound are marked thus, a̯, e̯, etc. In the terminations _as_, _on_, and some others, words familiar in English have the vowels marked obscure; less familiar words have the vowels marked short: Ænea̯s, Amyclăs; Jaso̯n, Typhŏn, etc. The termination _eus_ from Greek nouns of the third declension in ευς is treated as one syllable, though its resolution into two syllables is admissible on good authority: Brī´a̯rēūs or Brìā´rè ŭs, Or´phēūs or Or´phè ŭs, etc.