Hesperides the Isle of Juno."" The island was the seat of Geryon, who was overcome by Heracles. The Hesperides tend a blissful garden in a far western corner of the world, located near the Atlas mountains in North Africa at the edge of the encircling Oceanus, the world-ocean. According to the Sicilian Greek poet Stesichorus, in his poem the "Song of Geryon", and the Greek geographer Strabo, in his book "Geographika" (volume III), the garden of the Hesperides is located in Tartessos, a location placed in the south of the Iberian peninsula. Euesperides (in modern-day Benghazi) which was probably founded by
The Sunlight on the Garden describes it as "one of MacNeice's saddest and most beautiful lyrics". According to Jon Stallworthy, Louis MacNeice wrote "The Sunlight on the Garden" as a "love-song" for his first wife, Mary Ezra, shortly after their divorce was finalised in November 1936. Mary had left MacNeice for Charles Katzman in November 1935, and she followed Katzman to America early the next year. MacNeice was initially "devastated". However, by the time the divorce was finalised, MacNeice was able to contemplate the end of his marriage with acceptance (as in the first stanza of "The Sunlight on the Garden") and to remember his