ored.
(Inferno.)

As fall off the light autumnal leaves,
One still another following, till the bough
Strews all its honours on the earth beneath.
(Inferno.)

Bees, dolphins, rays of sunlight, snow, starlings, doves, frogs, a
bull, falcons, fishes, larks, and rooks are all used, generally with
characteristic touches of detail.

Specially tender is this:

E'en as the bird, who 'mid the leafy bower
Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night
With her sweet brood; impatient to descry
Their wished looks, and to bring home their food,
In the fond quest, unconscious of her toil;

She, of the time prevenient, on the spray
That overhangs their couch, with wakeful gaze
Expects the sun, nor, ever, till the dawn
Removeth from the east her eager ken,
So stood the dame erect.

The most important forward step was made by Petrarch, and it is
strange that this escaped Humboldt in his famous sketch in the second
volume of _Cosmos_, as well as his commentator Schaller, and
Friedlander.

For when we turn from Hellenism to Petrarch, it does not seem as if
many centuries lay between; but rather as if notes first struck in
the one had just blended into distinct harmony in the other.

The modern spirit arose from a union of the genius of the Italian
people of the thirteenth century with antiquity, and the feeling for
Nature had a share in the wider culture, both as to sentimentality
and grasp of scenery. Classic and modern joined hands in Petrarch.
Many Hellenic motives handed on by Roman poets reappear in his
poetry, but always with that something in addition of which antiquity
shewed but a trace--the modern subjectivity and individuality. It was
the change from early bud to full blossom. He was one of the first to
deserve the name of modern--modern, that is, in his whole feeling and
mode of thought, in his sentimentality and his melancholy, and in the
fact that 'more than most before and after him, he tried to know
himself and to hand on to others what he knew.' (Geiger.) It is an
appropriate remark of Hettner's, that the phrase, 'he has discovered
his heart,' might serve as a motto for Petrarch's songs and sonnets.
He knew that he had that sentimental disorder which he called
'acedia,' and wished to be rid of it. This word has a history of its
own. To the Greeks, to Apollonius, for instance,[4] it meant
careles