Milton, after the fourth line of his Comus, had originally inserted, in his manuscript draft of the poem, the following description of the garden of the Hesperides.
THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES
Amid the Hesperian gardens, on whose banks
Bedewed with nectar and celestial songs
Eternal roses grow, and hyacinth,
And fruits of golden rind, on whose fair tree
The scaly harnessed dragon ever keeps
His uninchanted eye, around the verge
And sacred limits of this blissful Isle
The jealous ocean that old river winds
His far extended aims, till with steep fall
Half his waste flood the wide Atlantic fills;
And half the slow unfathomed Stygian pool
But soft, I was not sent to court your wonder
With distant worlds and strange removéd climes
Yet thence I come and oft from thence behold
The smoke and stir of this dim narrow spot
Milton subsequently drew his pen through these lines, for what reason is not known. Bishop Newton observes, that this passage, saved from intended destruction, may serve as a specimen of the truth of the observation that
Poets lose half the praise they should have got
Could it be known what they discreetly blot.
Waller.
As I have quoted in an [earlier page] some unfavorable allusions to Homer's description of a Grecian garden, it will be but fair to follow up Milton's picture of Paradise, and Tasso's garden of Armida, and Ariosto's Garden of Alcina, and Spenser's Garden of Adonis and his Bower of Bliss, with Homer's description of the Garden of Alcinous. Minerva tells Ulysses that the Royal mansion to which the garden of Alcinous is attached is of such conspicuous grandeur and so generally known, that any child might lead him to it;
For Phoeacia's sons
Possess not houses equalling in aught
The mansion of Alcinous, the king.
I shall give Cowper's version, because it may be less familiar to the reader than Pope's, which is in every one's hand.
THE GARDEN OF ALCINOUS