Now I think we can start to see in the Symonds poem, which I’ll read from, first of all the geographical placing, this imagining that he derives from his knowledge and his sculptures, but also from historically placing the context in which what will become a narrative is already set:

Behold, a vision of the world-old Nile
Of porch and palace-tower and peristyle
Glazed in the oily current smooth and calm,
With many a fringed mile of sultry palm
Shimmering in noon-day sunlight!…

We move effectively to the introduction of Antinous, and notice how Symonds works towards representing this figure in the dual role of the boy, the favourite of the emperor, but also of a statue:

And none but Adrian heard – save one who stayed
Beside him; one in whose quick pulses played
Fire of free life imperious; a boy
Of nineteenth summers, framed for power and joy.
Crisp on his temples curled the coal-black hair;
White myrtle flowers and leaves were woven there:
His eyes had solemn lights in them and shone
Flame-like neath cloudy brows: his cheeks were wan
With passion; and the soul upon his lips
Smouldering like some fierce plane in eclipse,
Breathed fascination terrible and strong,
As though quick pride strove with remembered wrong.
But oh! What tongue shall tell the orient glow
Of those orbed breasts, smooth dawn-smitten snow,
The regal gait, processional and grand,
As of a god; the sunny marble hand,
Grasping a silk-enwoven cedar-wand?

This sort of duality, this kind of equivocation between the lustre of the marble, and the glint of light on flesh, is persistent throughout the poem. As for ‘Those orbed breasts, smooth as dawn-smitten snow’ – it’s interesting that the use of that word ‘orbed’ is quite unusual poetically. I mean ‘orbed’ has a dual sense both of a roundel but also of a full globe, and the only previous poetic use of the word ‘orbed’ I can find was actually in Shelley, the person to whom Symonds is most in debt as a poet, and on whom he had written a significant study. But Shelley, in his poem ‘The Cloud’, is describing the Moon in these terms: ‘that orbed maiden with white fire laden /Whom mortals call the Moon’. So he is very definitely talking about a disk, whereas Symonds clearly used the term to emphasise the particular swelling effect of the breast of Antinous, an element in Antinous sculptures which I think only this afternoon was described as being very particular.