landscape piece

james ferdinand morton
pattern of predictable precision
may 15, 1930 thursday.

''god i swoon! i swoon with the conciousness of compleat and culminant beauty! ia! shubniggurath! yogsothoth!!!! i have seen maymont!!!!!! ...

''you are no doubt sensible, from many observations of mine, that to me the quality of utter, perfect beauty assumes two supreme incarnations or adumbrations. one the sight of mystical city towers and roofs out lined against a sunset and glimps'd from a fairly distant baulstrade terrace.

''and the other, the experience of walking [or as in most of my dreams, aerially floating] thro' aethereal and enchanted gardens of exotick delicacy and opulance, with carved stone bridges, labyrinthine walks, marble fountains, terraces and staircases, strange pagodas, hillside grottoes, curious statues, termini, sundials, benches, basins, and lanthorns, lily'd pools of swans and streams with tiers of waterfalls, spreading gingko-trees and drooping, feathery willows, and sun-touched flowers of a bizarre, klarkash-tonick pattern never beheld on sea or land ...

''well, by god, sir, call me an aged lier or not--i vow i have actually found the garden of my earliest dreams--and in no other city than richmond home of my beloved poe! maymont! i shall dream of little else all the few remaining days of my long life!!--

raptorously thine--
theobaldus.

h.p.lovecraft, selected letters.

maymont estate.