Apollo having slain with his arrows, Python, a monstrous serpent which
desolated the beautiful country around Parnassus, his victory was
celebrated in all Greece by the young Pythians; where crowns, {45} formed
at first of the branches of oak, but afterwards of laurel, were distributed
to the conquerors, and where they contended for the prize of dancing, music
and poetry.
It is from his encounter with this serpent, that in the statues which
remain of him, our eyes are familiar with the bow placed in his grasp.
----------------"The lord of the unerring bow,
The god of life, and poesy, and light,
The sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow,
All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
The shaft hath just been shot--the arrow, bright
With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye
And nostril, beautiful disdain, and might,
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity.
"But in his delicate form, a dream of love,
Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast
Longed for a deathless lover from above,
And maddened in that vision, are exprest
All that ideal beauty ever blest
The mind with, in its most unearthly mood,
When each conception was a heavenly guest,
A ray of immortality, and stood
Star like, around, until they gathered to a God!
"And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven
The fire which we endure, it was repaid
By him to whom the energy was given,
Which this poetic marble hath arrayed
With an eternal glory, which if made
By human hands, is not of human thought,
And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid
One ringlet in the dust, nor hath it caught
A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought."