Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham

The Story of Phoebus and Daphne, Applied

Thyrsis, a youth of the inspirèd train,
Fair Saccharissa loved, but loved in vain;
Like Phoebus sung the no less am’rous boy;
Like Daphne she, as lovely, and as coy!
With numbers he the flying nymph pursues,
With numbers such as Phoebus’ self might use!
Such is the chase when Love and Fancy leads,
O’er craggy mountains, and through flow’ry meads;
Invoked to testify the lover’s care,
Or form some image of his cruel fair.
Urged with his fury, like a wounded deer,
O’er these he fled; and now approaching near,
Had reach’d the nymph with his harmonious lay,
Whom all his charms could not incline to stay.
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 Phoebus thus, acquiring unsought praise,
He catch’d at love, and fill’d his arms with bays.1

Notes

1 ‘Daphne’: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, b. i.