These things are there. The garden and the tree
The serpent at its root, the fruit of gold
The woman in the shadow of the boughs 
The running water and the grassy space.
They are and were there. At the old world's rim, 
In the Hesperidean grove, the fruit
Glowed golden on eternal boughs, and there
The dragon Ladon crisped his jellwed crest
Scraped a gold claw and sharped a silver tooth 
And dozed and waited through eternity
Until the tricksy hero Herakles
Came to this dispossession and the theft. 



Randolph Henry Ash, from The Garden of Proserpina, 1861