t time is only an illusion, and that the men of Greece derived
their life from the same source from whence ours is derived, and that in
all respects they were men with like tastes, passions, aspirations and
ambitions as ourselves.

He believed in the free, happy, spontaneous life of the individual; and
again and again he affirms that the life of expression--the life of
activity--is the only life. Our happiest moments are when we forget self
in useful effort. He held that every man should sing, speak, paint or
carve--this that he might taste the joys of self-expression. Constantly
he affirms that this expression of our highest and best is Paradise. He
combats the idea of Dante that Heaven and Hell are places or localities.

Yet Petrarch was profoundly influenced by Dante. He used the same
metaphors, symbols and figures. As a word-artist, possibly he was not
the equal of Dante, but as a man, an educated man, sane and useful, he
far surpasses Dante. He met princes, popes and kings as equals. He was
at home in every phase of society; his creations were greater than his
poems; and as a diplomat, wise, discreet, sincere, loyal to his own, he
was almost the equal of our own Doctor Franklin.

And always and forever he clung to his love for Laura. From his
twenty-third year to his seventieth, he dedicated and wrote poems to
Laura.

He sings her wit, her beauty, her grace, her subtle insight, her
spiritual worth. The book compiled after his death entitled, "Poems on
the Life and Death of Laura," forms a mine of love and allusion that
served poets and lovers in good stead for three hundred years, and which
has now been melted down and passed into the current coin of every
tongue. It was his love-nature that made Petrarch sing, and it was his
love-poems that make his name immortal. He expressed for us the undying,
eternal dream of a love where the man and woman shall live together as
one in their hopes, thoughts, deeds and desires; where they shall work
for each other; live for each other; and through this blending of
spirit, we will be able to forget the sordid present, the squalid here,
the rankling now. By love's alchemy we will gild each hour and day, so
it will be a time of joyous hope, and life will be a continual
feast-day. And so through the desire and effort to express, we will
reach the highest good, or paradise.

Petrarch did not live this ideal life of love and service--he only
dreamed it. But his dream is a prophe