Welcome back to the Daily Poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, an English poet who lived from 1806 to 1861,

which marks her as part of the Victorian era. She was a key figure in romanticism in England. I previously read

How Do I Love the Sonnet that she wrote in 1845 on this show. But today's poem is called a musical

instrument. And here it is, a musical instrument by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. What was he doing, the great god pan, down in the reeds by the river?

Spreading ruin and scattering ban, splashing and paddling with hooves of a goat,

and breaking the golden lilies afloat with the dragonfly on the river?

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, from the deep cool

bed of the river. The limpid water turbidly ran and the broken lilies a dying lay, and the dragonfly

had fled away, ere he brought it out of the river. High on the shore, state the great God Pan,

while turbidly flowed the river,

"'and hacked and hewed as a great god can with his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,

"'till there was not a sign of a 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,

"'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 sate by the river.

This is the way, laughed the great God Pan, laughed while he sate by the river, the only way

since the gods began, to make sweet music they could succeed,

then dropped his mouth to a hole in the reed he blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, oh, pan, piercing sweet by the river,

blinding sweet, oh great god pan.

The sun on the hill forgot to die, and the lilies revived and the dragonfly came back

...