and
ancient caverns to seek its fellow by day and by night; and when I
see the plains adorned again with glorious flowers and new leaves,
and hear every babbling brook with grateful murmurs bathing its
flowery banks, so that Nature, in love with herself, delights to gaze
on the beauty of her works, I say to myself, reflecting: "How brief
is this our miserable mortal life!" Yesterday this plain was covered
with snow, to-day it is green and flowery. And again in a moment the
beauty of the heavens is overclouded by a fierce wind, and the happy
loving creatures remain hidden amidst the mountains and the woods;
nor can the sweet songs of the tender plants and happy birds be
heard, for these cruel storms have dried up the flowers on the
ground; the birds are mute, the most rapid streams and smallest
rivulets are checked by frost, and what was one hour so beautiful and
joyous, is, for a season, miserable and dead.'

Here the two pictures in the inner and outer life are equally vivid
to the poetess; it is the real 'pleasure of sorrow,' and she lingers
over them with delight.

Bojardo, too, reminds us of Petrarch; for example, in Sonnet 89:[13]

Thou shady wood, inured my griefs to hear,
So oft expressed in quick and broken sighs;
Thou glorious sun, unused to set or rise
But as the witness of my daily fear;

Ye wandering birds, ye flocks and ranging deer,
Exempt from my consuming agonies;
Thou sunny stream to whom my sorrow flies
'Mid savage rocks and wilds, no human traces near.

O witnesses eternal, how I live!
My sufferings hear, and win to their relief
That scornful beauty--tell her how I grieve!

But little 'tis to her to hear my grief.
To her, who sees the pangs which I receive,
And seeing, deigns them not the least relief.

Lorenzo de Medici's idylls were particularly rich in descriptions of
Nature and full of feeling. 'Here too that delight in pain, in
telling of their unhappiness and renunciation; here too those
wonderful tones which distinguish the sonnets of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries so favourably from those of a later time.'
(Geiger.)

There is a delicate compliment in this sonnet:

O violets, sweet and fresh and pure indeed,
Culled by that hand beyond all others fair!
What rain or what pure air has striven to bear
Flowers far excelling those 'tis wont to yield?
What pearly dew, what sun, or sooth what earth
Did you with all these subtle charms ado