(Sonnet 294.)

Here we have happiness and misery felt in the modern way, and Nature
in the modern way drawn into the circle of thought and feeling, and
personified.

Petrarch was the first, since the days of Hellenism, to enjoy the
pleasures of solitude quite consciously.

How often to my darling place of rest,
Fleeing from all, could I myself but flee,
I walk and wet with tears my path and breast.
(Sonnet 240.)

He shared Schiller's thought:

Oh Nature is perfect, wherever we stray,
'Tis man that deforms it with care.

As love from thought to thought, from hill to hill,
Directs me, when all ways that people tread
Seem to the quiet of my being, foes,
If some lone shore, or fountain-head, or rill
Or shady glen, between two slopes outspread,
I find--my daunted soul doth there repose....
On mountain heights, in briary woods, I find
Some rest; but every dwelling place on earth
Appeareth to my eyes a deadly bane....
Where some tall pine or hillock spreads a shade,
I sometimes halt, and on the nearest brink
Her lovely face I picture from my mind....
Oft hath her living likeness met my sight,
(Oh who'll believe the word?) in waters clear,
On beechen stems, on some green lawny space,
Or in white cloud....
Her loveliest portrait there my fancy draws,
And when Truth overawes
That sweet delusion, frozen to the core,
I then sit down, on living rock, dead stone,
And seem to muse, and weep and write thereon....
Then touch my thoughts and sense
Those widths of air which hence her beauty part,
Which always is so near, yet far away....
Beyond that Alp, my Ode,
Where heaven above is gladdest and most clear,
Again thou'lt meet me where the streamlet flows
And thrilling airs disclose
The fresh and scented laurel thicket near,
There is my heart and she that stealeth it.
(Ode 17.)

It is the same idea as Goethe's in _Knowest thou the Land_? Again:

Alone, engrossed, the least frequented strands
I traverse with my footsteps faint and slow,
And often wary glances round me throw,
To flee, should human trace imprint the sands.
(Sonnet 28.)

A life of solitude I've ever sought,
This many a field and forest knows, and will.
(Sonnet 221.)

Love of solitude and feeling f