So to the sacred Sun in Memnon's fane Spontaneous concords choired the matin strain; Touched by his orient beam responsive rings The living lyre and vibrates all its strings; Accordant aisles the tender tones prolong, And holy echoes swell the adoring song.[168] FOOTNOTES: [163] Ovid, Metam. 7, 394 _et seq._ [164] Ovid, Metam. 11, 583-748. [165] Homeric Hymn to Venus; Horace, Odes, 1, 22; 2, 16; Apollodorus, 3, 12, § 4. [166] Ovid, Metam. 13, 622, etc. Odyssey, 4, 188; 11, 522. Pindar, Pyth. 6, 30. [167] Pausanias, 1, 42, § 2. [168] Darwin, Botanic Garden. CHAPTER XII MYTHS OF THE LESSER DIVINITIES OF EARTH, ETC. =129. Pan, and the Personification of Nature.= It was a pleasing trait in the old paganism that it loved to trace in every operation of nature the agency of deity. The imagination of the Greeks peopled the regions of earth and sea with divinities, to whose agency it attributed the phenomena that our philosophy ascribes to the operation of natural law. So Pan, the god of woods and fields,[169] whose name seemed to signify _all_, came to be considered a symbol of the universe and a personification of Nature. "Universal Pan," says Milton in his description of the creation: Universal Pan, Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, Led on the eternal Spring. Later, Pan came to be regarded as a representative of all the Greek gods and of paganism itself. Indeed, according to an early Christian tradition, when the heavenly host announced to the shepherds the birth of Christ, a deep groan, heard through the isles of Greece, told that great Pan was dead, that the dynasty of Olympus was dethroned, and the several deities sent wandering in cold and darkness. The lonely mountains o'er, And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale, Edged with poplar pale, The parting Genius is with sighing sent; With flower-inwoven tresses torn, The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.[170] Many a poet has lamented the change. For even if the head did profit for a time by the revolt against the divine prerogative of nature, it is more than possible that the heart lost in due proportion. His sorrow at this loss of imaginative sympathy among the moderns Wordsworth expresses in the sonnet, already cited, beginning "The world is too much with us." Schiller, also, by his poem, The Gods of Greece, has immortalized his sorrow for the decadence of the ancient mythology. [Illustration: FIG. 102. PAN BLOWING HIS PIPE, ECHO ANSWERING] Ah, the beauteous world while yet ye ruled it,-- Yet--by gladsome touches of the hand; Ah, the joyous hearts that still ye governed, Gods of Beauty, ye, of Fable-land! Then, ah, then, the mysteries resplendent Triumphed.--Other was it then, I ween, When thy shrines were odorous with garlands, Thou, of Amathus the queen.