Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

PAN'S PIPES
But let him feign never so carefully, there is not a
man but has his pulses shaken when Pan trolls out
a stave of ecstasy and sets the world a-singing.
Alas if that were all ! But oftentimes the air is
changed ; and in the screech of the night-wind,
chasing navies, subverting the tall ships and the
rooted cedar of the hills ; in the random deadly levin
or the fury of headlong floods, we recognise the
' dread foundation ' of life and the anger in Pan's
heart. Earth wages open war against her children,
and under her softest touch hides treacherous claws.
The cool waters invite us in to drown ; the domestic
hearth burns 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 circumstances. 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
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