Parnasso in festa his own love life, when, enamoured of the nymph Daphne, he pursued her with lustful intent, but she prayed to the gods to be spared and was transformed into a laurel tree. As if embarrassed by this story, Apollo invites all to join him in drinking in praise of Bacchus. Mars, god of war, leads everyone in a drinking song, and Clio joins in the spirit of things so much that she begins to feel inebriated, much to the amusement of Orpheus' mother, Calliope, muse of epic poetry, and the chorus. The muses sing in turn in praise of Orpheus'
Poetry and the Gods that Lovecraft and Winifred Jackson co-wrote with a Greek mythology basis. What Anna Helen Crofts contributed to "Poetry and the Gods" is unknown. Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi reports that she "appeared sporadically in the amateur press, and may have been introduced to [Lovecraft] by Winifred Jackson." Lovecraft's surviving letters do not mention "Poetry and the Gods". In his 1955 essay on the Cthulhu Mythos, Lovecraft scholar George Wetzel compares the messenger god Hermes in "Poetry and the Gods" with Nyarlathotep, the "messenger of Azathoth". Wetzel considers the dream communication used by Hermes to be "the same psychic device used