The word " paean " is now used in the sense of any song of joy or triumph.
It is nearly 20 years since Bill Bryson first penned his deliciously witty paean to precision Troublesome Words.
A soothing tonic indeed to then read Woolf's paean to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel, Flush.
Next year he published Le Pape, a vision of the spirit of Christ in appeal against the spirit of Christianity, his ideal follower confronted and contrasted with his nominal vicar; next year again La Pitie supreme, a plea for charity towards tyrants who know not what they do, perverted by omnipotence and degraded by adoration; two years later Religions et religion, a poem which is at once a cry of faith and a protest against the creeds which deform and distort and leave it misshapen and envenomed and defiled; and in the same year L'Ane, a paean of satiric invective against the past follies of learned ignorance, and lyric rapture of confidence in the future wisdom and the final conscience of the world.
About the 4th century the paean became merely a formula of adulation; its object was either to implore protection against disease and misfortune, or to offer thanks after such protection had been rendered.