Genre:

Poetry, Drollery

Subjects:

Photography, Aesthetics, Light, Commerce

    Tells Apollo, the 'Patron of artists', that the 'sons of art abuse thee'—the 'Photographers, on Science basely trading, / The Sun thou rulest to their ends pervert, / And make it do the drawing and the shading / Of pictures cheap and scandalous as dirt'. Calls on Apollo to look on the gruesome faces and 'gross' scenes which photographers portray with 'thy rays', and to 'quell these horrid Pythons of the mud' and to 'smite' these 'foul offensive brood of reptiles' with 'thy sharp shafts'.