the midday sun
Then like one of his own kids he lowers his head and runs ; he leaves his flock under the olives ; he slips into a dense ilex-wood , still chill with the morning ; he presses towards its edge ; panting he climbs a huge and ancient tree that flings its boughs forward above the temple wall ; he creeps along a branch among the thick small leaves , -- he lifts his head . ` The temple is before him , and the sacred grove . He sees the great terrace , stretching to the lake ; he hears the little waves plashing on its buttressed wall . ` Close beneath him , towards the rising and the midday sun there stretches a great niched wall girdling the temple on two sides , each niche a shrine , and in each shrine a cold white form that waits the sun -- Apollo the Far-Darter , and the spear-bearing Pallas , and among them that golden Cæsar , of whom the country talks , who has given great gifts to the temple -- he and his grandson , the young Gaius . ` The boy strains his eye to see , and as the light strikes into the niche , flames on the gleaming breastplate , and the uplifted hand , he trembles on his branch for fear . Hurriedly he turns his look on the dwellings of the priestesses , where all still sleeps ; on the rows of shining pillars that stand round about the temple ; on the close-set trees of the grove that stands between it and the lake . ` Hark !