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.
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.
A soothing tonic indeed to then read Woolf's paean to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel, Flush.
The epic of Gilgamesh - the oldest surviving epic poem and greatest paean to friendship in literature containing the pre-biblical sources of The Flood.