The Wind in the Willows
4 (p. 84) a sudden clear call from an actual articulate voice: Rat and Mole are progressively drawn to the articulate voice of nature, which culminates in their vision of Pan and the sound of his music. Grahame is indebted to the British romantic poets for this chapter’s imagery and tone. Indeed, the chapter’s structure recalls that of Wordsworth’s sonnet “Composed by the Side of Grasmere Lake” (1806), which begins as evening turns to night, concerns the speaker’s troubled spirit, and ends: “But list! a voice is near; / Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds, / ‘Be thankful, thou; for, if unholy deeds / Ravage the world, tranquility is here!’ ”
5 (p. 87) he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper: Grahame describes the nature god, Pan—half-man, half-goat—as a benevolent force, exemplifying the neo-pagan mysticism associated with the nineteenth century. Compared with the depiction of Pan in ancient Greek mythology, his sexuality is moderated here; his paternalism is accentuated; and he bestows on Rat and Mole the gift of forgetfulness, a talent that he did not have in antiquity and that is Grahame’s invention.
6 (p. 91) “And hark to the wind playing in the reeds!”: One of Grahame’s early titles for his book was “The Wind in the Reeds,” which he abandoned because it echoed too closely the volume of poems by W B. Yeats entitled The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). Another title he considered, among others, was “Mr. Mole and His Mates.” The one he chose operates on two levels. “The Wind in the Willows” signifies literally the sound of the wind “whispering” through the “reed-stems” (p. 18), which Mole hears in chapter 1, and connotes a deeper meaning as the whispering becomes the music and message of Pan in chapter 7.