I saw in my vision one of the heroes of the antique world.  He rode for many, many days, yet saw no kindly human face.  After long wanderings and toils he came to the Gardens of Twilight, the rich and rare gardens of the primeval world, known by rumour to the ancient Greeks as the Hesperides.  He looked around with wonder; the place was all a misty dazzle with light, a level light as of evening that flowed everywhere about; the air was rich with the scent of many blossoms; from each flower rose an odour that hovered about it as a delicate vapour.  While he gazed, one of the spirits of the garden came nigh him in the guise of a beautiful human child.

“How came you here?”

“I wandered for many years,” he said, “I fought with the dragons that lie coiled in citron scales on the highways; I warred against oppression; I made justice to prevail, and now that peace is on the land I might have rested with peace in mine own heart, but I could not yet.  So I left behind the happy hearths and homes of men and rode onward, a secret fire burning ceaselessly within me; I know not in what strange home it will be still.  But what gardens are these?”

“They are the Gardens of Twilight,” answered the child.

“How beautiful then must be the Gardens of Day!  How like a faint fine dust of amethyst and gold the mist arises from the enchanted odorous flowers!  Surely some spirit things must dwell within the air that breaks so perpetually into hues of pearl and shell!”

“They are the servants of Zeus,” the child said.  “They live within these wandering airs; they go forth into the world and make mystery in the hearts of men.”

“Was it one such guided me thither?”

“I do not know; but this I know, whether led by the wandering spirits or guided by their own hearts, none can remain here safely and look upon the flowers save those who understand their mystery or those who can create an equal beauty.  For all others deadly is the scent of the blossoms; stricken with madness, they are whirled away into the outer world in fever, passion and unending hunger and torment.”

“I do not care if I pass from them,” said the wanderer.  “It is not here my heart could be still and its desire cease, but in the first Fount.”

They passed on and went deeper into the Gardens of Twilight, which were ever-changing, opalescent, ever-blushing with new and momentary beauty, ever-vanishing before the steady gaze to reveal beneath more silent worlds of mystic being.  Like vapour, now gorgeous and now delicate, they wavered, or as the giant weeds are shadowing around the diver in the Indian wave sun-drenched through all its deeps of green.  Sometimes a path would unfold, with a million shining flowers of blue, twinkling like stars in the Wilky Way, beneath their feet, and would wind away delicately into the faery distances.