Apollo and Daphne of conceit towards Cupid, so much that Cupid decides to change this permanently. As Cupid's effects start to take over Apollo, he is filled with lust for Daphne, and it grows stronger throughout the entire chase. Once Daphne is transformed, Apollo's desire becomes grief at the loss of Daphne, yet it continues on and he makes her his. This loss is shown through a heavy use of the nasal consonants, emulating a sound of moaning, with loss in this example. In "Metamorphoses," Ovid uses specific word orders to show Daphne's transformation from a woman to a tree. In the first
The Wood Nymph the "erotic harmonic vocabulary" of "Tristan und Isolde" in the third section and the "motive of the forbidden question" from "Lohengrin" in the funereal march from the finale. In light of Sibelius's "Nietzschean response" to Wagner's operas (initially enamored, Sibelius by July 1894 had repudiated Wagner's ideas as "calculated" and "manufactured"), such observations are of particular interest in that they illustrate the extent to which Sibelius, at the time of "The Wood Nymph", had not yet succeeded in breaking with the German master. A few musicologists have speculated that "The Wood Nymph" is potentially autobiographical. Murtomäki, most notably, has argued