Apollo (furiously whipping his coursers, while his blanching locks are falling from his head):
"I have left far behind me stony Delos, so pure that all now there seems dead; and I must strive to reach Delphi ere its inspiring vapour be wholly lost. The mules browse in its laurel groves. The Pythoness has wandered away, and cannot be found.
"By a stronger concentration of my power, I will obtain sublime hymns, eternal monuments; and all matter will be penetrated by the vibrations of my cithara!"
(He strikes the strings of the instrument. They burst, lashing his face with their broken ends. He flings the cithara away; and furiously whipping his quadriga, cries):
"No! enough of forms!—Further, higher!—to the very summit!—to the realm of pure thought!"
(But the horses back, rear, dash the chariot to pieces. Entangled by the harness, caught by the fragments of the broken pole, he falls head foremost into the abyss.
... he falls head foremost into the abyss
The sky is darkened.)