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 for Nature limit or increase each other; and Petrarch; like Dante, took scientific interest in her, and found her a stimulant to mental work.
Burckhardt says: 'The enjoyment of Nature is for him the favourite accompaniment of intellectual pursuits; it was to combine the two that he lived in learned retirement at Vaucluse and elsewhere, that he from time to time fled from the world and from his age.'