How may I describe the wonder of that place?  For at last, he before, I following, though he still held my hand, we came out of the stairway on to a platform on the top of the tower surrounded by a broken battlement.  It was as though I had suddenly entered the last hiding-place of Aphrodite herself.  On the floor sat an old and lame man sharpening a scythe, and beside him a little child lay among the broken corn that was strewn over the whole platform.  Where the battlements had once frowned, now stood sheaves of smiling corn, golden and nodding in the wind and the sun.  Suddenly the lad who had led me hither seized the flail and began to beat the corn and stalks strewn over the floor, while the old man, quavering a little, sang a long-drawn-out gay melody, and the little girl beat her tiny hands in time to the work and the music.  Then, unheard, into this miracle came a young woman,—­ah, was it not Persephone,—­slim as an osier in the shadow, walking like a bright peacock straight above herself, climbing the steps, and her hands were on her hips and on her black head was a sheaf of corn.  Then she breathed deep, gazed over the blue sea, and set her burden down with its fellows on the parapet, smiling and beating her hands at the little girl.

Porto Venere rises out of the sea like Tintagel—­but a classic sea, a sea covered with broken blossoms.  It was evening when I returned again to the Temple of Venus The moon was like a sickle of silver, far away the waves fawned along the shore as though to call the nymphs from the woods; the sun was set; out of the east night was coming.  In the great caves, full of coolness and mystery, the Tritons seemed to be playing with sea monsters, while from far away I thought I heard the lamentable voice of Ariadne weeping for Theseus.  Ah no, they are not dead, the beautiful, fair gods.  Here, in the temple of Aphrodite, on the threshold of Italy, I will lift up my heart.  Though the songs we made are dead and the dances forgotten, though the statues are broken, the temples destroyed, still in my heart there is a song and in my blood a murmur as of dancing, and I will carve new statues and rebuild the temples every day.  For I have loved you, O Gods, in the forests and on the mountains and by the seashore.  I, too, am fashioned out of the red earth, and all the sea is in my heart, and my lover is the wind.  As the rivers sing of the sea, so will I sing till I find you.  As the mountains wait for the sun, so will I wait in the night of the city.

For my joy, and my lord the sun, I give you thanks, that he is splendid and strong and beautiful beyond beauty.  For the sea and all mysterious things I give you thanks, that I have understood and am reconciled with them.  For the earth when the sun is set, for the earth when the sun is risen, for the valleys and the hills, for the flowers and the trees, I give you thanks, that I am one with them always and out of them was I made.  For the wind of morning, for the wind of evening, for the tender night, for the growing day, take, then, my thanks, O Gods, for the cypress, for the ilex, for the olive on the road to Italy in the sunset and the summer.