Aphrodite

What I have promised, I will perform, says Eddison's Aphrodite, and I must say, that despite her reputation, and her dubious family background, she is the deity that has always dealt most fairly with me. She gives fair warning, and she makes few promises, and what she does promise she delivers. I have never regretted her service.

Not that it would signify, if I did: I have grown old in it and I'm fit for no other, now. It has more to do with the dazzling white of the sky than with fugitive nymphs, at this point. So bright that the pattern of the douglas fir boughs, against it, is printed on the inside of my eyelids. I was promised intensity, and the ability to take or leave anything else life might offer with a shrug, and she has given me those. Eyes open or closed, background or figure: the ragged boughs are there, with the light pouring through them.