Page:Half a hundred hero tales of Ulysses and the men of old.djvu/38

 THE STORY OF DAPHNE

BY M. M. BIRD

PHŒBUS APOLLO, the Sun-god, a hunter unmatched in the chase, had slain the awful Python with his shafts. To commemorate such a doughty deed, he instituted the Pythian Games wherein noble youths should strive for mastery. The prize was a simple green wreath, the symbol of victory. The laurel was not yet the leaf dedicated to the wreaths the gods bestowed upon the happy victors, but every kind of green was worn with promiscuous grace upon the flowing locks of Phœbus.

Flushed with pride in his new success against the Python, Phœbus saw Cupid, Venus immortal son, bending his bow and aiming his feathered shafts at unwary mortals. A heart once pricked by one of those tiny darts felt all the bitter-sweet of love, and never recovered from the wound. Him Phœbus taunted. "Are such as these fit weapons for chits?" he cried. "Know that such archery is my proper business. My shafts fly resistless. See how the Python has met his just doom at my hands. Take up thy torch, and, with that only, singe the feeble souls of lovers."

Cupid returned him answer that though on all beside Apollo's shafts might be resistless, to Cupid would justly be the fame when he himself was conquered. The mischievous boy flew away to the heights of Parnassus, and thence winged one of his sharpest arrows against the breast of the bold deity. Another and different shaft he

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