Story of the Flute
To fill with song this leafy glade—
Bring harp and flute"—(A Sylvan Revel, E. C. Lefroy).
Patie in Ramsey's Gentle Shepherd plays the flute. Wordsworth's Ruth cheers herself in her lonelinessIn the
Poets with a flute made of hemlock stalk, and in The Prelude (viii.) mention is made of the shepherd's sprightly fife; but the poet more usually refers to "the fife of war" (ib., vi.), and twice speaks of "the thrill of fifes." Wordsworth did not himself play—he says "I whose breath would labour at the flute in vain" (Epis. to Beaumont)—but one of his boyish playmates was a flautist (Prelude, ii.), and in one of his sonnets he refers to the playing of a friend.
How beautifully does Keats address the "happy melodist unwearied, for ever piping songs for ever new," depicted on a Grecian urn playing a double flute:—
Are sweeter; therefore ye soft pipes play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd.
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone."
In Endymion he speaks of "ebon-tippéd flutes." Shelley also refers to the double-flute (Unfinished Drama), and in his Prometheus Unbound speaks of "a lake-surrounding flute," whose sounds o'erflow the listener's brain, so sweet that joy is almost pain.
Poetic reference is very frequently made to the234
