d by Alexandrian and Roman poets,
praise of a happy past time; the chorus sings in _Aminta_:

O lovely age of gold,
Not that the rivers rolled
With milk, or that the woods wept honeydew;
Not that the ready ground
Produced without a wound,
Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew....
But solely that.... the law of gold,
That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted,
Which Nature's own hand wrote--What pleases is permitted!...
Go! let us love, the daylight dies, is born;
But unto us the light
Dies once for all, and sleep brings on eternal night.

Over thirty pastoral plays can be ascribed to Italy in the last third
of the sixteenth century. The most successful imitator of Tasso was
Giovanni Battista Guarini (born 1537) in _The True Shepherd (II
Pastor Fido)_. One quotation will shew how he outvied _Aminta_. In
Act I, Scene 1, Linko says:

Look round thee, Sylvia; behold
All in the world that's amiable and fair
Is love's sweet work: heaven loves, the earth, the sea,
Are full of love and own his mighty sway.
Love through the woods
The fiercest beasts; love through the waves attends
Swift gliding dolphins and the sluggish whales.
That little bird which sings....
Oh, had he human sense,
'I burn with love,' he'd cry, 'I burn with love,'
And in his heart he truly burns,
And in his warble speaks
A language, well by his dear mate conceived,
Who answering cries, 'And I too burn with love.'

He praises woodland solitude:

Dear happy groves!
And them all silent, solitary gloom,
True residence of peace and of repose!
How willingly, how willingly my steps
To you return, and oh! if but my stars
Benightly had decreed
My life for solitude, and as my wish
Would naturally prompt to pass my days--
No, not the Elysian fields,
Those happy gardens of the demi-gods,
Would I exchange for yon enchanting shades.

The love lyrics of the later Renaissance are remarkably rich in vivid
pictures of Nature combined with much personal sentiment. Petrarch's
are the model; he inspired Vittoria Colonna, and she too revelled in
sad feelings and memories, especially about the death of her
husband:[12]

'When I see the earth adorned and beautiful with a thousand lovely
and sweet flowers, and how in the heavens every star is resplendent
with varied colours; when I see that every solitary and lively
creature is moved by natural instinct to come out of the forests