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'
The Wood Nymph to be "really a tone painter and poet" in the mold of the symphonic poems of Liszt. In "The Wood Nymph", Sibelius adheres closely to the narrative structure of Rydberg's poem, so much so that at the 1895 premiere, audience members were provided with copies of the source material, indicating the centrality of Rydberg's plot to the performance. Due to its programmatic qualities, musicologists commonly describe "The Wood Nymph", although in one movement, as consisting of four informal sections or "dramatic "tableaux"", each of which corresponds to one of the poem's four stanzas: Björn, "a tall and handsome lad", is