Hesperides immortal as long as he touched his mother, Gaia, the earth. Heracles killed Antaeus by holding him aloft and crushing him in a bearhug. Herodotus claims that Heracles stopped in Egypt, where King Busiris decided to make him the yearly sacrifice, but Heracles burst out of his chains. Finally making his way to the Garden of the Hesperides, Heracles tricked Atlas into retrieving some of the golden apples for him, by offering to hold up the heavens for a little while (Atlas was able to take them as, in this version, he was the father or otherwise related to the
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