WEBVTT
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Midas Part 2
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From that day onwards, King Midas hated gold.
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Every day he would wander deep in the forest far from his palace,
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far from the clink and the chink of golden coins,
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far from the glimmer and the glitter of golden statues.
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He would wander deep and deep into the silences of the forest.
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And one day, as he was wandering, suddenly he heard the sound of music;
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and he stumbled on a clearing,
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and there, sitting in the middle of the clearing, was Pan,
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the god of wild things, the god of wild places and wild animals,
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Pan with his horns and his goat legs, playing his pipes, his pan-pipes.
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King Midas crouched among the bushes listening to the music, enchanted and entranced.
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And then Pan lowered his pipes from his lips and he began to boast:
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'I’m the finest musician of them all.
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I’m the finest musician in the world.
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I’m a finer musician even than golden Apollo,
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when he plucks his golden lyre.'
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Well, nothing is hidden from the eyes and the ears of the mighty gods and goddesses.
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And golden Apollo, on the high slopes of Mount Olympus,
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heard the sound of Pan's voice and his forehead furrowed into a frown.
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And suddenly the golden god was standing in the clearing in front of Pan.
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And King Midas, ‘Eh?’
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Two gods staring at one another.
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And golden Apollo said,
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'Pan, we will have a contest of music, you and I,
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and the judge will be that mountain.'
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And he pointed to a great mountain called Tmolus that rose high above the tops of the trees.
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And as golden Apollo pointed, a strange thing happened.
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From either side of the mountain two huge, grey, stone ears unfolded.
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And the first to play was Pan;
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he lifted his pipes to his lips and he began to blow.
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And in his music were all the sounds of wild nature:
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the baying and the belling of stags,
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the howling of wolves,
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the thundering of hooves,
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the creaking and cracking of branches,
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the crashing of flood water,
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the bright songs of birds,
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the humming of bees.
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It was a music both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
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And then Pan lowered his pipe from his lips.
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And Apollo lifted his lyre to his shoulder and he began to play.
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And as he played,
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it was as though the strings of his lyre were the threads of the loom upon which the whole world was woven.
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It was as though every note was an element,
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every melody was a formula.
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And as the shimmering, cascading music came,
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the whole world held its breath.
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And then, when Apollo lowered his lyre from his shoulder and the music stopped,
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the whole world sighed.
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Pan dropped to his knees and lowered his head.
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The great mountain Tmolus opened his cavernous cave of a mouth and pronounced,
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'Apollo is the winner.'
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But then, from among the bushes, there came a voice:
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'No!.
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Why should the victory go to golden Apollo?
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Why should the victory go to the plinkety plonk of a plucked lyre when Pan's music is the real thing?
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Pan's music is finer by far.'
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It was King Midas.
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And golden Apollo turned and looked at him,
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and he frowned.
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And with the frown of Apollo King Midas felt himself suddenly strangely changed.
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He reached up, he felt his face with his hands,
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and his ears had moved.
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They were no longer growing out of the side of his face;
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they were growing out of the top of his head.
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He touched them with his fingers:
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two grey twitching, bristling donkey's ears.
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Those ears, that had listened and had not heard,
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had been turned into the ears of an ass.
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He looked around himself.
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Pan had vanished.
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He crouched down behind the bushes,
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folding his ears down against the side of his face.
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And all day he waited till the sun set and the night came and the sky brightened with stars.
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And then he made his way through the forest and back to his palace.
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And he found a length of purple cloth and he wrapped it round and around and around and around his head.
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And he thought, 'Now, nobody need know.'
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But a king's hair will grow just as anybody else's hair will grow.
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And the days and the weeks and the months passed.
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And soon enough, King Midas knew that he needed a haircut.
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And so he called a barber to a secret room.
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And he said to the barber,
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'Can you keep a secret?'
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And the barber said, 'Oh yes, I can keep a secret.'
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And King Midas said, 'If you can keep my secret,
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you have a job for life.
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Every week you can cut my hair,
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and every week I'll pay you with a purse full of silver coins.'
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And the barber said, 'Then, I can certainly keep your secret.'
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So King Midas unwound the cloth,
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he unwound it and he unwound it,
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and his hair flopped down over his shoulders;
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and out of the top of his head two twitching, bristling, grey donkey's ears pointed up at the ceiling.
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And the barber stared,
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laughter and horror wrestling in the pit of his belly,
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but he said nothing.
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And he took his scissors and his razor,
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and he shaved and he shaped and he cut and he clipped.
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And when the hair was done,
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King Midas took a purse of silver coins and he dropped it into the barber's hand,
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and he said, 'Remember, not a word to anybody.'
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And the barber bowed and he was gone.
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And King Midas wrapped the purple cloth round and around and around his head.
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And for one day, the barber kept the secret.
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But it was as though he had a mouse pouched in his cheek.
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Every time he opened his mouth,
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he thought the secret was going to jump out.
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For two days he kept the secret,
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but every word he spoke seemed to be turning into 'King Midas has donkey's ears'.
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Every thought seemed to be becoming
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'The king has the ears of an ass.'
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And on the third day he could stand it no longer.
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He went out into a forest with a trowel.
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He knelt on the ground, he dug a hole and he whispered into the hole,
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'King Midas has donkey's ears;
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the king has the ears of an ass.'
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And he filled up the hole and he went home,
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feeling comfortable at last.
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But where he'd dug the hole, a cluster of reeds grew.
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And the wind blew through the reeds,
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and the reeds began to whisper the secret.
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And the birds heard the reeds whispering,
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and they began to sing the secret.
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And soon enough the whole world knew:
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King Midas has donkey's ears;
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the king has the ears of an ass.