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Long after this, which surely should have satisfied a Platonic lover, he is looking forward to a more perfect consummation of his wishes:

Love sends me messengers of gentle thought, Since days of yore our trusty go-between, And comforts me, who ne’er, he saith, have been So near as now to hopes fruition brought.

What hope’s fruition was we learn from numerous sonnets composed after the death of Laura, in which the poet expresses his thankfulness that his mistress did not yield to his too ardent entreaties, but kept him in order by her frowns, a function attributed to her even in the first book of sonnets:

O happy arts of excellent effect! I labouring with the tongue, she with the glance, Have glory there, and virtue here bestowed.

Laura’s attitude towards Petrarch seems not ill expressed in the sonnet composed in the eighteenth century by Ippolito Pindemonte:

To thee, immortal lady lowly laid Where Sorga glassed thy loveliness divine. I bow in worship; not because was thine The beauty solely for the coffin made; But for the soul that animating swayed, And, cold and colder growing, did incline Brighter and brighter yet to soar and shine Thy lover’s flame of passion unallayed. For certes his lament had seemed misplaced, And much the pathos of his music marred, Had not his lady been so very chaste: Come, grateful Italy, with fond regard, To kiss the tomb by such a tenant graced, And bless the dust that gave thee such a bard.