Look over Rheneia to the west: around us, beyond broad spaces of clear blue sea, the inner circle of the Cyclades rise in that marvellous harmony of clear contour with subtle blending of colour which is distinctive of Aegean scenery. There is Syra (the "isle Syria" of the Odyssey) in front, to the west,—a long dark line, with the conical hill above its busy port, Hermupolis, strongly marked;—to the right of Syra, in the north-west background, a glimpse of Gyaros,—one of the two islands (Myconos being the other) to which the legend said that floating Delos was made fast; on our right, to the north, rugged Tenos springs bluffly from the waves, its shoulder blocking Andros out of sight in the far north-west. Turn to the east—there is Myconos, hospitable in this century to the Greek exiles of Psara, a huge granite rock with a town nestling on an arable slope,—some two miles and a half away: and then in the south-east, about twenty miles off, the great island of Naxos, once the foremost of the Cyclades, whose early school of art has left traces here in Delos; next to it, to the south-west, its lesser neighbour, Paros, the mine of marble,—once, in Roman days, protectress of this island; between Naxos and Paros, a gleam of Ios, where old Greece said that Homer lay buried; and, remote in the south-west distance, little Seriphos, and Siphnos, in all ages nursing mother of seamen; just beyond it—though unseen from here—is Melos. As we look out on this wide sea-view, the past lives again; the "Songs of Deliverance" (ῥύσια) are once more
