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bovalle
bovalle
06.04.2020 • 
English

Consider the poem "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 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. ‘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.”

Write two paragraphs. Use details from the readings to support your points. In the first paragraph, explain the connection between the poem and the myth of Pan. In the second paragraph, explain how the two differ in terms the events and Pan's actions.

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