Classic Poem

When , exiled from the Olympian hall,
Apollo kept thy flocks,
Admetus, all the day and all
The night-tide, plaintive, musical,
He fluted to the rocks.

In troops the attentive birds sat round,
And hungering wolves did press,
Mild with the magic of the sound,
'Mid fearless sheep, and many a browned
Shepherd and shepherdess.

Till, on a day, supernal light
Those umbrages illumes,
And dark dells kindle and grow bright
With unexpected Hermes' flight
Earthward on glowing plumes.

" Brother," he cries, " thy penance o'er,
Olympus seek again,
Shine on our feasts as heretofore,
Mete out the morning, and restore
Thy Pythoness her strain."

And, as the missioned god declares
His grateful errand, fall
Apollo's weeds, a form he bares
Raying with Deity, and wears
A beamy coronal.

But awe and apprehension grew
On all that pastoral throng.
" O spare us, for indeed we rue
Our rash familiarness!" " Ye do
Immortal bosoms wrong."

Smiling, the gentle Power replied,
" Fair children of the sods!
If godlike 'twere to stand aside
From human friendship, none but Pride
And Folly would be Gods."