Syrinx

The god replied: “On the cool mountainside

of Arcady, among the woodland nymphs

whose home was in the forest of Nonacris,

one was most famous—she whom they called Syrinx.

And more than once that nymph had been pursued

but had eluded all the guile and wiles

of Satyrs and the many gods who dwell

in shaded woods or on the fertile fields.

For like Diana, goddess of Ortygia,

 

Latin [672–94]

 

she was a devotee of chastity;

and she dressed like Diana, so that one

might well have thought she was Latona’s daughter—

except for this: Diana bore a bow

of gold, while Syrinx’ was of cornel wood.

Despite that difference, she was often taken

to be Diana. And one day, as she

was coming back from Mount Lycaeus, Pan

caught sight of Syrinx. He—whose head was wreathed

with sharp pine needles—said . . .”

 

                        And much was left

to tell: how Syrinx, scorning all his pleas,

fled through the barren waste until she reached

the placid, sandy stream of Ladon: here

the river blocked her flight, and so she begged

her sister water nymphs to change her shape.

And Pan, who thought that he had caught the nymph,

did not clutch her fair body but marsh reeds;

and he began to sigh; and then the air,

vibrating in the reeds, produced a sound

most delicate, like a lament. And Pan,

enchanted by the sweetness of a sound

that none had ever heard before, cried out:

“And this is how I shall converse with you!”

He took unequal lengths of reeds, and these

Pan joined with wax: this instrument still keeps

the name Pan gave it then, the nymph’s name—Syrinx.