Apples of Hesperides

Glinting golden through the trees,

Apples of Hesperides!

Through the moon-pierced warp of night

Shoot pale shafts of yellow light,

Swaying to the kissing breeze

Swings the treasure, golden-gleaming,

Apples of Hesperides!

Far and lofty yet they glimmer,

Apples of Hesperides!

Blinded by their radiant shimmer,

Pushing forward just for these;

Dew-besprinkled, bramble-marred,

Poor duped mortal, travel-scarred,

Always thinking soon to seize

And possess the golden-glistening

Apples of Hesperides!

Orbed, and glittering, and pendent,

Apples of Hesperides!

Not one missing, still transcendent,

Clustering like a swarm of bees.

Yielding to no man's desire,

Glowing with a saffron fire,

Splendid, unassailed, the golden

Apples of Hesperides!

- Amy Lowell

Notes:

(1) Hera’s golden apple orchard is the Garden of the Hesperides in the mythology. The consumption of a golden apple from this special orchard results in immortality.

(2) Hera was given the original apple branches by Gaia, the primordial deity and mother of all life, for her wedding gift when she married Zeus.

(3) Hesperides is the plural for Hesperis, and represents the multiple nymphs of the garden of Hera.

(4) The Hesperides guarded Hera’s apple trees in the Garden of Hesperides, but shared the task with Ladon a dragon who had one hundred heads and never slept. This was Hera’s back up plan, as even the nymphs couldn’t be trusted not to take magical apples for themselves.

(5) Amy Lawrence Lowell (1874–1925) was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts, who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.

[Image: Garden of the Hesperides (Le Jardin des Hesperides) (1898) oil on canvas by Albert Herter (1871-1950).]

The Smart Witch by Elizabeth