The Apollo lyre was the nursling of the Greeks, never absent from the Greek life; present in the home and in the temple, heard in the green meadows, and upon the mountain-side, and by the sapphire sea, gladdening the heart at household feasts, and inspiring the voice on the great days of rejoicing.
Those vast processions carved upon marble friezes speak to us of an existent life when to the people Apollo was “an evident god”; days when through the shaded valleys, and along the terraced mountain-sides, young men and maidens with dance and song made a delighted way,—
“touched piously the Delphic lyre,”
and to the sacrificial altar eager throngs pressed onward and upward,—as in his word-magic Keats pictures it;—
“with trumpets blown
Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival,
Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir
Of strings on hollow shells, ...
... and the mysterious priest,
Leading that heifer lowing at the skies,