PETRARCH THE MAN 



together praying that I continue to love. But you, 

 calling to me from the sky, by the memory of your 

 bitter death entreat me to scorn the world and all its 

 sweet snares." Observe here the curious role which the 

 fickle Petrarch makes nature play. Two other pas- 

 sages, which I will now quote, do more credit to his 

 honesty. They belong to a class the best-known 

 examples of which are perhaps Lamartine's Lac and 

 Musset's Souvenir J the Hterature of impassioned recol- 

 lection. The first is the sonnet, Valle, che de^ lamenti 

 miei se^ plena: " Valley, full of my lamentations, river 

 often swollen with my tears, denizens of the woods, 

 animals of the forest, beautiful birds, fish imprisoned 

 by either bank, air serene and warmed by my sighs, 

 sweet path turned so bitter, hills which once did please 

 me and now give pain, whither again love leads me 

 from old habit, well do I recognize in you the old self, 

 but not, alas! in me, who, after so happy a life, am 

 become the abode of endless grief." The second is 

 Sento Vaura mia antica: " I feel the breezes of old, I 

 see appear the sweet hills where my light was born, 

 which, so long as Heaven willed, made eager and glad my 

 eyes, now sad and wet. O fallen hopes, idle thoughts ! 

 Widowed is the grass, turbid are the streams, and empty 

 and cold the nest in which she lay, and in which I Uve, 

 desiring death. ' ' I have quoted enough to prove, I think, 

 that Petrarch's love for nature, and, with it, solitude, 

 was far from being a sham; and I have tried to point 

 out that a new note has appeared in Hterature. 



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