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Hypnerotomachia Poliphili – Francesca Colonna [translated by Joscelyn Godwin]

This heavenly and delicious place, all planted and decorated, combined a vegetable garden, a herbarium, a fertile orchard, a convenient plantation, a pleasant arboretum and a delightful shrubbery.

There was no place for mountains or deserts; all unevenness had been eliminated, so that it was plane and level up to the circular steps of the wonderful theatre.  The trees were sweet of scent, plentiful of fruit, and broad of branch.  It was a garden yielding incomparable pleasure, extremely fertile, decked with flowers, free from obstacles and traps, and ornamented with playing fountains and cool rivulets. 

The sky was not hard on it, but was temperate, wide transparent and luminous.  There were no Avernian places with horrid shadows; it was free from the changeable and inconstant weather that troubles one with the assaults of unhealthy winds.  It was not invaded by hurtful wintry frosts, nor in summer by excessive sunshine or by torrid drought, neither did freezing plague it, but all was springlike, and more wholesome even than the air of that part of Egypt that faces Libya; it prolonged health and well being to all eternity.

The place was planned with lawns, and with an impressive wealth of leafy trees that presented a wonderful display of verdure.  Around everything there breathed the incredible limpid air, redolent of flowers, for the whole area was covered with grass and fresh rosemary, and flowery meadows.  It was unimaginably prolific of every pleasure and all nature's gifts.  Coloured fruits showed through a foliage that was always green; all was in friendship and concord, with walks going among the plantings and many an arching rose bower.  The plain of Themiscyra, however well watered and planted, was nothing to it.