Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/845

 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

High on the shore sat the great god Pan,

While turbidly flow'd the river; And hacked and hew'd as a great god can With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed

To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan (How tall it stood in the river I),

Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,

Steadily from the outside ring,

And notched the poor dry empty thing In holes, as he sat by the river.

c This is the way,' laugh'd the great god Pan

(Laugh'd while he sat by the river), 'The only way, since gods began To make sweet music, they could succeed.' Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan '

Piercing sweet by the river' Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly

Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man:

The true gods sigh for the cost and pain

For the reed which grows nevermore again

As a reed with the reeds of the river.

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