Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

Pans Pipes 267
up in the hour of sleep, and makes an end
of all. Everything is good or bad, helpful
or deadly, not in itself, but by its circum-
stances. For a few bright days in England
the hurricane must break forth and the
North Sea pay a toll of populous ships.
And when the universal music has led lovers
into the paths of dalliance, confident of
Nature's sympathy, suddenly the air shifts
into a minor, and death makes a clutch from
his ambuscade below the bed of marriage.
For death is given in a kiss ; the dearest
kindnesses are fatal ; and into this life, where
one thing preys upon another, the child too
often makes its entrance from the mother's
corpse. It is no wonder, with so traitorous
a scheme of things, if the wise people who
created for us the idea of Pan thought that
of all fears the fear of him was the most
terrible, since it embraces all. And still we
preserve the phrase : a panic terror. To
reckon dangers too curiously, to hearken too
intently for the threat that runs through all
the winning music of the world, to hold back