e flowers, stars white and pink and odorous, we dream
of Olivet, or the grave Garden of the Agony, and the trees seem always
whispering of sacred things. How people can blaspheme against the
olives, and call them imitations of the willow, or complain that they
are shabby shrubs, I do not know.[6]

This shore would stand for Shelley's Island of Epipsychidion, or
the golden age which Empedocles describes, when the mild nations
worshipped Aphrodite with incense and the images of beasts and
yellow honey, and no blood was spilt upon her altars--when 'the trees
flourished with perennial leaves and fruit, and ample crops adorned
their boughs through all the year.' This even now is literally true of
the lemon-groves, which do not cease to flower and ripen. Everything
fits in to complete the reproduction of Greek pastoral life. The goats
eat cytisus and myrtle on the shore; a whole flock gathered round me
as I sat beneath a tuft of golden green euphorbia the other day, and
nibbled bread from my hands. The frog still croaks by tank and
fountain, 'whom the Muses have ordained to sing for aye,' in
spite of Bion's death. The narcissus, anemone, and hyacinth still tell
their tales of love and death. Hesper still gazes on the shepherd
from the mountain-head. The slender cypresses still vibrate, the pines
murmur. Pan sleeps in noontide heat, and goat-herds and wayfaring
men lie down to slumber by the roadside, under olive-boughs in which
cicadas sing. The little villages high up are just as white, the
mountains just as grey and shadowy when evening falls. Nothing is
changed--except ourselves. I expect to find a statue of Priapus or
pastoral Pan, hung with wreaths of flowers--the meal cake, honey, and
spilt wine upon his altar, and young boys and maidens dancing round.
Surely, in some far-off glade, by the side of lemon-grove or garden,
near the village, there must be still a pagan remnant of glad
Nature-worship. Surely I shall chance upon some Thyrsis piping in the
pine-tree shade, or Daphne flying from the arms of Phoebus. So I dream
until I come upon the Calvary set on a solitary hillock, with its
prayer-steps lending a wide prospect across the olives and the
orange-trees, and the broad valleys, to immeasurable skies and purple
seas. There is the iron cross, the wounded heart, the spear, the reed,
the nails, the crown of thorns, the cup of sacrificial blood, the
title, with its superscription royal and divine. The other day we
cross