Pleasance... (#850)

(an instance of Generic Performance Room made by Marcus)

     The _locus_amoenus_, to which we now pass,
      has not previously been recognized
     as possessing an independent rhetorico-poetical existence.
     
      Yet, from the Empire to the sixteenth century,
     it forms the principal motif of all nature description.
      It is, as we saw, a beautiful, shaded natural site.
      Its minimum ingredients comprise
     
      a tree (or sever tree
      al s),
      a meadow, and a spring
      or brook.
      Birdsong and flowers may be added.
     The most elaborate examples
      also add a breeze.
     
     [E.R.Curtius, _European_Literature_in_the_Latin_Middle_Ages_, p. 195]
     

EXITS:
      [ topoi ] topoi.
      [ up ] TechnoTopia. Discontented with the complacencies of a merely literary pleasance? Rush, thrust, vault into Cyberspace...

This place has a certain ambiance...
     Amidst the foliage bright-hued birds concord, sweetly a song of finding all in each.
     Above you rise the weaving boughs of elms.
     The shade encloses everything in green.
     A vista stretches, easement for the eyes-- a meadow, gold and green, and hills behind.
     The philosophic muse reflects on love.
     A lone cicada saws and sings his mind.
     A burbling spring sings silver in the pool...
     Zephyr whispers, "All there is of warmth."
     Down from the spring a brook steps -- washes on.
     Green turf fresh mown gives forth its sharp sweet scent.
     When abstract words, conceptions govern sense.