I Deserve the Sky

They whisper behind me, doubting blood divine flows in my veins. But what greater proof of Apollo's blood than I steering his golden chariot across the heavens? My father hesitates - yet surely this glory is mine by right of birth? No more ambition sways me; I am Phaethon, son of the Sun! Today, the whispers end and my true name will blaze across the sky.

Phaethon asks his father for the chariot, engraving by Hendrik Goltzius, 1590