【Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon】
1680
Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée), French (active in Rome), about 1600–1682

亦译埃利孔山，希腊语作Oros Elikon，希腊山峰。维奥蒂亚州(Boeotia)的赫利孔山脉，于科珀伊斯(Kopais)湖和科林斯湾之间，是帕尔纳索斯山(Mount. Parnassus）的延伸部分，海拔约1,500公尺。在古典文学中以作为缪斯女神经常光临的地方而受到赞颂，东麓被特别辟为圣地。附近有阿加尼佩(Aganippe)泉和希波克林(Hippocrene)泉。

根据2世纪希腊地理学家保萨尼阿斯(Pausanias)的描述，赫利孔是希腊最富庶的山。

Personal Helicon

By Seamus Heaney

for Michael Longley 

As a child, they could not keep me from wells 
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. 
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells 
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. 


One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top. 
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket 
Plummeted down at the end of a rope. 
So deep you saw no reflection in it. 


A shallow one under a dry stone ditch 
Fructified like any aquarium. 
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch 
A white face hovered over the bottom. 


Others had echoes, gave back your own call 
With a clean new music in it. And one 
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall 
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection. 


Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, 
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring 
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme 
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.