A lyrical description of the Greek island of Thera, bursting with flowers and trees, and all sloping down to a soft lilac-tinged blue sea. 

But there is a delicate order, too, imposed by tracery of asphodel and grape-hyacinth, purple mallow and coppery dandelion, by root of wild fig and branch of wild olive; in the prostrate stones of that scheme the static pattern of lichen abides, the fleeting pattern of the hawk’s wing goes in a flash, lizard twinkles, butterfly hovers, an coney is seen and gone; where hot blue sky is overhead, and on all sides the mountain thrusts down to the hare-bell sea.  

Source: Louis Golding, Good-bye to Ithaca (London: Hutchinson, 1955), p. 125