Secret glade; devious haunt

All this moving wordery from my literary brethren.

("Maman, I don't believe you've yet met my companion in devilry, Lord Baddeley-Wells ..."

"No, indeed. Good day to you, sir.

Far more important, where is that delightful young gel serving those cooling sherbets?"

"Allow me, Lady Holmes" [shimmers off in search]

LMH: "Good shimmer, agile toady. You could learn from him. Ah! So kind.")

Far more important, I'm suddenly sad for my wasted salad days.

Time to take up my lyre and compose ... in the meantime ...

"The Gods are dead; no longer do we bring
To grey-eyed Pallas crowns of olive leaves!
Demeter's child no more hath tithe of sheaves,
And in the noon the careless shepherds sing,
For Pan is dead, and all the wontoning
By secret glade and devious haunt is o'er;
Young Hylas seeks the water-springs no more;
Great Pan is dead, and Mary's son is King ..."

"Santi Deka" Corfu, Oscar Wilde

Yo! Like I'm not your Mister "Brainy Thread", going to keep allowing these posh comments. Nuff already, dudes.

Badass Badders scrolls in - maybe for the last time if he keeps up his Balliol bavardage - with:

"Pan dead? ... long ago, in Aegina, in the midst of much happy laughter, singing, eating, drinking and boisterous table talk in which, I, a polite political innocent so far as Greece was concerned, heard reference to the name Markezinis.

Outside the glow of a taverna, rather than squeeze through the crowd I strolled down the gravel road for a pee. The etesian northerly, which Maria detested and wouldn't call meltemi, was gusting as boisterously as our party, stirring the olives trees into a crackling roar that ebbed and flowed like breaking surf.

Standing in the warm dark I was assailed by fear, more intense for the closeness of the bustling taverna. My anxieties are to do with enclosure, so this was odd. Maria said later, and matter-of-factly, that I'd had a bout of Panic - sudden fear in a lonely or open place caused by 'him'.

My Greek step-mother was always coming out with this kind of tosh. I think Pan might be there when one is suddenly filled with awe in a lonely place - like the toad on the hill I saw the other day."

And the dear boy treats us to a flickeroo.

Actually, this is damn'd fine stuff and I'm humbled he'd share it here.

Also, I'm back from dinner with Island mag's composer of the 'Lost in Translation' page and frivolous with laughter from her latest deliveries of "wonderful words in Grik" for which there's no English:

Kili'othoulos - slave to one's stomach.

Xethe'onome - To be de-godded, ie Xethe'othika sti douli'a, I de-godded myself working; worked extremely hard or, as I still slip into, 'worked like a black'.