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 life, they experienced a certain type of female sexual adventurousness that their wives could not easily match." He hypothesizes that "The Wood Nymph" and other contemporaneous compositions were Sibelius's method of dealing with the emotional consequences of this and his guilt towards his wife Aino. With its focus on sexual fantasy, "The Wood Nymph" differs sharply from the Rydberg poem "Snöfrid" which Sibelius set in 1900. In "", Gunnar, the patriotic hero, resists a water nymph's sensuous "embrace" to instead "fight the hopeless fight" for his country and "die nameless". The contrast between Björn and Gunnar, Murtomäki argues, reflects Sibelius's