Observations placeholder

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili – Francesca Colonna [translated by Joscelyn Godwin]

Ingenious nature showed forth all the delights that she has carefully produced and spread throughout the world, as though she had created them with especial care and heaped them all together here. 

The ground was grassy and flowery, and had springs surging up in shady places, giving forth water as lucid as liquid glass and fresher than the spring of Salmacis.  None here suffered the rigorous Arctus or the cloud bearing Notus; the air was health giving, purged and pure, and transparent to the eyes for a great distance.  It was smooth, uniform and invariable. 

The great amenity of the place and its moderate exposure to the sky never suffered violent change; every cloud dissolved and dispelled, leaving the sky clear.  There were no insolent winds such as noisy Eurus and whistling Aquilon; none of the  malign violence and din of the raging hurricane, nor any adverse weather.  It was subject neither to tumultuous changes of the waters nor to frigid Libra, but everything appeared luminous to the view in an ideal light, glad and growing, as in the month when woolly Aries dries his fleece in the bright and Herculean sunshine. 

Nothing faded, but all was perpetually green and filled with a celebration of bird songs, as the crested lark and the musical nightingale flew together singing through the air.