the helm himself when the great east wind began to blow its fiercest, steered straight for the island where the daughters of old Hesperus the Wise guarded the tree with the golden fruit. It is a December poem, and yet the scene of it is laid in a land where the boughs were blossomed and “unknown flowers bent down before their feet;” where there were the lilies of spring in the grass, the fruit of autumn on the trees, and, over all, the warm light of a summer sun. Well for the poet that his song was of olden times! The reader is content in his December tale to take him at his word, to see wade off from the shingle the man
“Who had a lion’s skin cast over him,
So wrought with gold that the fell show’d but dim
Betwixt the threads.”
And afterwards to see him at the foot of the golden-fruited tree, in the land of roses and singing-birds, standing where
“Three damsels stood naked, from head to feet.
Save for the glory of their hair.”
We see him pick the red-gleaming apples, note the branch spring back, and then watch him, with the round fruit in his hand, go down across the lawn, dappled with flowers and fallen fruit, to the Tyrian ship again.
“His name is Hercules,
And e’en ye Asian folk have heard of him.”
We “Asian folk” have indeed heard of a land where, by some pantomime of nature, roses are winter flowers and fruit ripen in December, where there are singing-birds instead of old cock-robins and turkeys, and where
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