PETRARCH THE MAN 



murmur of the stream as it broke over the pebbles; now, 

 sitting on the bare hills, you measured freely with your 

 glance the plain extended at your feet. Now, sleeping 

 sweetly under the trees in a valley, you enjoyed your 

 beloved silence." But you may think this is mere 

 rhetoric. I do not. In his poetical epistle to Giacomo 

 of Colonna {Ep., i, 7) he says: " Often I spend whole 

 days in retired spots; in my right hand is my pen, in 

 my left the paper, and my mind teems with many 

 thoughts. How irksome it is for me then, if any one 

 appears in a shady path, and salutes me in a low voice, 

 when I am absorbed in other things and meditating 

 lofty ideas! How dehghtful it is to imbibe the silence 

 of the deep forest! All murmurs jar upon me, except 

 the rippling of the stream, or when the breeze, striking 

 my paper, causes it to rustle, making it seem as though 

 the poem itself were singing softly. Frequently my 

 lengthening shadow on the ground tells me the lateness 

 of the hour, that it is time to return home, and night 

 forces me to hasten my steps. Phoebus now sunk to 

 rest, Hesperus or the rising moon shows me my path 

 and saves me from the briars." ^' Alas," from another 

 letter, " how many times during the summer I have got 

 up at midnight, and, to avoid waking my sleeping 

 servants, have gone off alone in the moonlight, now tol 

 the fields, now to the mountains! How many times at 

 that hour I have entered with a shuddering deUght that 

 terrible cavern where the Sorgue rises, a place which 

 makes one tremble even if one visit it accompanied, in 



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