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 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 adorn; And whence is this sweet scent by Nature drawn, Or heaven who deigns to grant it to such worth? O, my dear violets, the hand which chose You from all others, that has made you fair, 'Twas that adorned you with such charm and worth; Sweet hand! which took my heart altho' it knows Its lowliness, with that you may compare. To that give thanks, and to none else on earth.

Thus we see that the Italians of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries were penetrated through and through by the modern spirit--were, indeed, its pioneers. They recognized their own individuality, pondered their own inner life, delighted in the charms of Nature, and described them in prose and poetry, both as counterparts to feeling and for her own sake.

Over all the literature we have been considering--whether poetic comparison and personification, or sentimental descriptions of pastoral life and a golden age, of blended inner and outer life, or of the finest details of scenery--there lies that bloom of the modern, that breath of subjective personality, so hard to define. The rest of contemporary Europe had no such culture of heart and mind, no such marked individuality, to shew.

The further growth of the Renaissance feeling, itself a rebirth of Hellenic and Roman feeling, was long delayed.

Let us turn next to Spain and Portugal--the countries chiefly affected by the great voyages of discovery, not only socially and economically, but artistically--and see the effect of the new scenery upon their imagination.