FASHIONING A PIPE.
"He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep, cool bed of the river.
* * * * * *
"Hacked and hewed 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!)
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.
'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan,
... 'The only way since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.'
... Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river."
—MRS. BARRETT BROWNING.
