Читать книгу Bulfinch's Mythology - Bulfinch Thomas - Страница 14

“Music exalts each joy, allays each grief,

Expels diseases, softens every pain;

And hence the wise of ancient days adored

One power of physic, melody, and song.”

The story of Apollo and Daphne is often alluded to by the poets. Waller applies it to the case of one whose amatory verses, though they did not soften the heart of his mistress, yet won for the poet wide-spread fame:

“Yet what he sung in his immortal strain,

Though unsuccessful, was not sung in vain.

All but the nymph that should redress his wrong,

Attend his passion and approve his song.

Like Phœbus thus, acquiring unsought praise,

He caught at love and filled his arms with bays.”

The following stanza from Shelley’s “Adonais” alludes to Byron’s early quarrel with the reviewers:

“The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;

The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead;

The vultures, to the conqueror’s banner true,

Who feed where Desolation first has fed,

And whose wings rain contagion: how they fled,

When like Apollo, from his golden bow,

The Pythian of the age one arrow sped

And smiled! The spoilers tempt no second blow;

They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them as they go.”