"this lovely green"

"No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress' name:
Little, alas, they know or heed
How far these beauties her exceed!
Fair trees! where'er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.

When we have run our passion's heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat:
The gods, who mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race:
Apollo hunted Daphne so
Only that she might laurel grow:
And Pan did after Syrinx speed
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

What wond'rous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass."

from The Garden  Andrew Marvell

To Colin Cloute

 "…
Thy lovely Rosolinde seemes now forlorn,
  and all thy gentle flockes forgotten quight,
Thy chaunged hart now holdes thy pypes in scorne,
  those prety pypes that did thy mates delight.
Those trustie mates, that loved thee so well,
Whom thou gav'st mirth: as they gave thee the bell.

Yet as thou earst with sweete roundelayes,
  didst stirre to glee our laddes in homely bowers:
So moughtst thou now in these refined layes,
  delight the dainty eares of higher powers.
And so mought they in their deepe skanning skill
Alow and grace our Collyns flowing quill.

And fare befall that Faerie Queene of thine,
  in whose faire eyes love linked with vertue sits:
Enfusing by those bewties fiers devyne,
  such high conceites into thy humble wits,
As raised hath poor pastors oaten reede,
From rusticke tunes, to chaunt heroique deedes.

…"

From To the learned Shepheard.  Hobynoll.

[Verse by Gabriel Harvey on Spenser's The Faerie Queene]

Piping down the valleys wild

"Piper sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read --
So he vanish'd from my sight
And I pluck'd a hollow reed

And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear."

From Songs of Innocence  William Blake

Islamic calligraphy

"The curvilinear script of North Africa and Spain is very different from those of the East.  Its most characteristic feature is the use of deep, almost hemispherical loops for the letters which descend below the line; in addition, the tops of the verticals incline to the left.  The loading of the rather thinnish, brown ink is very variable and this, together with the very soft attack of the strokes and the flick of the descenders, gives an appearance of brushwork rather than pen work; however, it is more probable that a rather soft and fibrous reed was used."

Islamic Art   Barbara Brend

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 sate the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river;
And he 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 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."


The Musical Instrument   Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Silver Swan

"The silver Swan, who living had no Note,
When Death approached,  unlocked her silent throat.
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sang her first and last, and sang no more:
'Farewell, all joys; O Death, come close mine eyes!
More Geese than Swans now live,
More Fools than Wise.'  "

Madrigal    Orlando Gibbons 1602