Hesperides with nuptial presents for the latter, and among them the goddess of Gaia, with branches having golden apples growing on them as a wedding gift. Hera, greatly admiring these, begged of Gaea to plant them in her gardens, which extended as far as Mount Atlas. The Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally picked apples from it themselves. Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden an immortal, never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard. In the myth of the Judgement of Paris, it was from the Garden that Eris, Goddess of
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