March Associations of Utility. 99 



Instrument/ there is an undertone of regretful melan- 

 choly. The ' great god Pan ' goes ' down in the reeds 

 by the river,' and hacks and hews at them till he has 

 got the material for his instrument ; but then comes the 

 deeper meaning of the poem the regret that poetical 

 culture and discipline should so isolate us from the 

 common world ; and pray just observe how sadly sweet 

 are the final cadences of the verse, and how much the 

 sadness is aided by our old association of melancholy 

 with reeds : 



* 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 that grows nevermore again 

 As a reed with the reeds in the river* 



Reeds have many associations of utility as well as 

 poetry. The reed-pen, still used by a few artists and 

 greatly valued by them on account of its qualities as an 

 instrument for powerful and picturesque design, was in 

 the early centuries of our era universally employed by 

 authors and transcribers, so that the plant has been a 

 servant both to literature and art, and has the dignity 

 which belongs to every instrument of culture.* Besides 

 these delicate uses, the reed has aided the early steps 

 of civilization by providing its first requisite, a roof ; 

 and a requisite only secondary to that, ^pdy^a, a fence, 



* To this might be added some reference to the papyrus of antiq- 

 uity, which was the leaf of the Nile reed, so that this plant has supplied 

 both pens and paper. 



