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Jane Austen’s “Mock Panegyric on a Young Friend” · The Daily Poem

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, September 4th, 2026.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by Jane Austen.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's originally untitled, but is known as Mock Panegyric on a Young Friend.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like her early fiction,
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  SPEAKER_00: most of Austen's poetry was written as occasional verse,
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  SPEAKER_00: largely for the entertainment of her friends and family,
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  SPEAKER_00: and she never distinguished herself as a poet in the way that she did as a novelist.
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  SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, many of her verses are light and entertaining and carry that classic Austen wit.
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  SPEAKER_00: In this poem,
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  SPEAKER_00: the young friend is her niece,
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  SPEAKER_00: Anna Lafroy,
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  SPEAKER_00: who she's playfully teasing with descriptions and stereotypes of
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  SPEAKER_00: the American continent.
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  SPEAKER_00: In the second stanza, she makes reference to Ontario's lake.
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  SPEAKER_00: She must mean America's lake, but I won't tell her if you don't.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here's the poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mock Panegyric on a Young Friend.
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  SPEAKER_00: In measured verse I'll now rehearse the charms of lovely Anna,
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  SPEAKER_00: and first her mind is unconfined like any vast savanna.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ontario's lake may fitly speak her fancies ample bound,
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  SPEAKER_00: its circuit may on strict survey five hundred miles be found.
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  SPEAKER_00: Her wit descends on foes and friends like famed Niagara's fall,
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  SPEAKER_00: and travellers gaze in wild amaze and listen one and all.
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  SPEAKER_00: Her judgment sound, Thick, black,
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  SPEAKER_00: profound,
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  SPEAKER_00: Like transatlantic groves, Dispenses aid and friendly shade To all that in it roves.
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  SPEAKER_00: If thus her mind To be defined America exhausts,
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  SPEAKER_00: And all that's grand In that great land In simile it costs,
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how can I her person Try to image and portray?
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  SPEAKER_00: How paint the face, the form, how trace In which those virtues lay?
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  SPEAKER_00: Another world must be unfurled,
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  SPEAKER_00: Another language known,
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  SPEAKER_00: Ere tongue or sound can publish round Her charms of flesh and bone.
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  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back next week with more poetry for you.
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  SPEAKER_00: Till then,
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  SPEAKER_00: visit us at dailypoempod.substack.com to subscribe and support The Daily Poem and
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: to listen to our entire back catalog of daily poems.
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  SPEAKER_00: For all of us at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson wishing you happy reading.