A MID-SUMMER TALE

BURNHAM BEECHES IN AUTUMN.

Hello everyone,

In the late 1980`s, Jim and I owned a young basset hound called Rosie.  One evening in mid-summer we took her to Burnham Beeches for an walk.  The Beeches is an ancient forest, dating back thousands of years.It was mentioned in the Domesday book and it has always had this feeling of age about it, perhaps it`s just me but it seems to have a life of its own sometimes.

This particular day had been very hot, too hot to take a dog for a walk and Rosie was keen to go out now it was cooler.  We arrived there at around 8.pm and wandered around under the cool forest floor just enjoying the peace and tranquility.  We decided to sit awhile on a bench at the further of the two ponds.  There were a few ducks, coots and moorhens swimming lazily among the lilypads while we just enjoyed sitting. 

That`s when we heard it.  At first we though someone had a radio playing at the other side of the pond, but what radio station would play pan pipes continously?  Furthermore, it had an eerie quality to it.  I even asked Jim if he could hear it too and he said he did.  This was really weird as we couldn`t see anyone and we were quite a distance from the road and there were no footpaths on the other side of the pond...it was getting rather strange.  Was it too ridiculous to think that Pan, the Greek god of the woods,  was playing those pipes ?  The music continued and I forget how long we sat there silently hoping that somebody would show their faces, maybe someone playing a joke, but no-one came.  Rosie seemed quite uneasy despite her usually laid-back nature and seemed desperate to get away, we decided that maybe we better make a move ourselves as it was almost 9.30 by then and the light was fading.

That evening was a long time ago, but I can still remember the music of the forest that we both heard that night.  I am still have no idea where it came from and though it would be easier to believe it was just a figment of our imaginations, I know it happened.  It disturbed Rosie and Jim doesn`t talk about it, I really wonder..................................

 

 

A Musical Instrument

What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.

"This is the way," laughed the great god Pan,
(Laughed while he sat by the river)
"The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed."
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
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.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain -
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.