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The lofty Column and the Laurel green, Whose shade was shelter for my weary thought, Are broken; mine no longer that which sought North, south and east and west shall not be seen. Ravished by Death the treasures twain have been Whereby I wended with glad courage fraught, By land or lordship ne’er to be rebought, Or golden heap or gem of Orient sheen. If this the high arbitrament of Fate, What else remains for me than visage bent, And eye embathed and spirit desolate? O life of man, in prospect excellent! What scarce stow striving years accumulate So lightly in a morning to be spent!

Petrarch’s demeanour after the death of his Laura presents a strong contrast to Dante’s after the like bereavement, nor does he suffer by the comparison. Nothing can surpass the poignancy of Dante’s first grief as depicted in theVita Nuova; but he soon forms another tie, and though the memory of Beatrice is ever with him, the human affection sublimates more and more into an abstract spiritual type. Petrarch’s utterances, on the other hand, wear at first something of a conventional semblance, but constantly increase in depth and tenderness, and while he remains the humanist in his studies and the diplomatist in active life, his poetry, as of old, is all but monopolised by his one passion. As his attachment to Laura in her life had been compatible with frequent and long absences, so her death did not prevent him from discharging the public functions fitly entrusted to the most eminent scholar of his age.