Analysis of A Musical Instrument
What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly 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 dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat 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 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
(Laughed 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 in the river.
Scheme | ABACCB ABADDB ABAEEB ABAFFB ABAEEB ABAGGB ABAXXB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111100111 10011010 101001001 10010011101 0100101001 101011010 111010111 101111010 011011 0010100101 001011101 111111010 110110111 111010 010110111 1111110101 11110110101 11111010 111110111 11110010 1101101101 10010111 01011101 011111010 110110111 11111010 01011101 111101101 11011101001 110101010 11111 1011010 1011111 011010111 00100100101 11111010 110110111 111111010 100101101 011110101 101111001 1011010010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,594 |
Words | 316 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 169 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 44 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 02, 2023
- 1:34 min read
- 312 Views
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"A Musical Instrument" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10211/a-musical-instrument>.
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