Definition of "pean"

The barbarian, wandering in nature's wilds, plucking the fruits as they grow, or destroying the game for his meat, and quenching his thirst with the waters of the gurgling rill, may furnish the poet with a theme for a pean to the goddess of Natural Liberty; but he will be a barbarian still, and his children after him, will roam over the same uncultivated wastes, and sleep in the same caves and dens, until they learn to associate with others and combine their efforts for mutual good.

1843 February, I. D. W., “Association”, in James E. Ridgely, editor, The Covenant and Official Magazine of the Grand Lodge of the United States, I[ndependent] O[rder of] O[dd] F[ellows]: A Monthly Periodical Devoted to the Cause of Odd Fellowship, volume II, number 2, page 68

Antimodern romanticism is not primarily a complaint about lost nature; it is mainly a pean to lost values. Modernity is relativistic, the existentialists complain; it has lost a sense of real values, true courage, meaningful integrity.

2007, Michael J. Mazarr, “The Existentialist Diagnosis”, in Unmodern Men in the Modern World: Radical Islam, Terrorism, and the War on Modernity, Cambridge, New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, page 81