From the temples of Athena, from which we had watched the sun move in a
clear line to light the mountain shrines above, we climbed to these temples of
Apollo and to the center of Delphi, where the Oracle once spoke. Tourists
began to arrive: German, French, Spanish, Dutch dominated the few British and
Americans. John and I were able to avoid them for the most part, and were able
to stop in silence before the shrine of the kings of Argos, the Athenian
treasury, and the standing columns of Apollo's temple. The treasury, well
preserved, holds only sparrows now, whose cries are those of protesting
spirits emerging from holes and crevices of the treasury walls, flying in the
face of the tourist onslaught as if to check the armies of Darius.
We climbed on, beyond the amphitheatre, few tourists following. The path
rises vertically, dissuading all but the true pilgrims. There, pine trees overhang the path, as does an ancient fig tree whose old limbs reach nearly to
the ground. Anemones and other purple and yellow wild flowers color the
tranquility, which the choruses of singing birds complete. Beyond a final bend
of the upward path, the stadium opens in level expanse beneath the rock peaks
of Delphi. From this quiet, highest reach, we gazed back over the ruins below
descending in grandeur to the distant gulf of Corinth.
The sun-- Apollo, as I realised in revelation -- shone warmly upon the
navel of the Earth. We returned to the lower temples past the throngs of
people pouring through the gates. We visited the chambers of the museum, like
a tomb itself, its rooms echoing as if through centuries. I looked longest
upon the living face of the charioteer, whose gemstone eyes flashed in the
light of the room in which he stood alone; And upon the face and body of
Antinoos, last of the gods, lost to the Nile, Hadrian's vision of Beauty and
Eros .
Keats' lines from Endymion seem appropriate here,
...Full in the middle of this Pleasantness
There stood a marble altar, with a tress
Of flowers budded newly; and the dew
Had taken fairy phantisies to strew
Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve,
And so the dawned light in pomp receive.
For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire
Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
Of brightness so unsullied, that therein
A melancholy spirit well might win
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
Into the winds...