For This Just Then Was My Pagan Soul's Desire - That (Not Forfeiting
My Inheritance For The Life To Come) It
Had yet been given me to
live through this world - to live a favoured mortal under the old
Olympian dispensation
- To speak out my resolves to the listening
Jove, and hear him answer with approving thunder - to be blessed
with divine counsels from the lips of Pallas Athenie - to believe -
ay, only to believe - to believe for one rapturous moment that in
the gloomy depths of the grove, by the mountain's side, there were
some leafy pathway that crisped beneath the glowing sandal of
Aphrodetie - Aphrodetie, not coldly disdainful of even a mortal's
love! And this vain, heathenish longing of mine was father to the
thought of visiting the scene of the ancient worship.
The isle is beautiful. From the edge of the rich, flowery fields
on which I trod to the midway sides of the snowy Olympus, the
ground could only here and there show an abrupt crag, or a high
straggling ridge that up-shouldered itself from out of the
wilderness of myrtles, and of the thousand bright-leaved shrubs
that twined their arms together in lovesome tangles. The air that
came to my lips was warm and fragrant as the ambrosial breath of
the goddess, infecting me, not (of course) with a faith in the old
religion of the isle, but with a sense and apprehension of its
mystic power - a power that was still to be obeyed - obeyed by ME,
for why otherwise did I toil on with sorry horses to "where, for
HER, the hundred altars glowed with Arabian incense, and breathed
with the fragrance of garlands ever fresh"? {13}
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