Brewer's: Hesperides

(4 syl.). Three sisters who guarded the golden apples which Hera (Juno) received as a marriage gift. They were assisted by the dragon Ladon. Many English poets call the place where these golden apples grew the “garden of the Hesperides.” Shakespeare (Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3) speaks of climbing trees in the Hesperides. (See Comus, lines 402-406.)

Show thee the tree, leafed with refinëd gold, Whereon the fearful dragon held his seat. That watched the garden called Hesperides.

RobertGrene: Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. (1508.)

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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