'O chaste virgins, winged visitants of flowery banks, whilst I prepared to sing your praise in lofty verse, at peep of day I was o'ercome by sleep, and then appeared a chorus of your tiny folk, and from their rich mellifluous haunts, in a clear voice these words flowed forth.... And I will sing how liquid and serene the air distils sweet honey, heavenly gilt, on flowerets and on grass, and how the bees, chaste and industrious, gather it, and thereof with care and skill make perfumed wax to grace the altars of our God.'
And a didactic poem by Luigi Alamanni (born 1495), called Husbandry, has: 'O blessed is he who dwells in peace, the actual tiller of his joyous fields, to whom, in his remoteness, the most righteous earth brings food, and secure in well-being, he rejoices in his heart. If thou art not surrounded by society rich with purple and gems, nor with houses adorned with costly woods, statues, and gold;... at least, secure in the humble dwelling of wood from the copse hard by, and common stones collected close at hand, which thine own hand has founded and built, whenever thou awakenest at the approach of dawn, thou dost not find outside those who bring news of a thousand events contrary to thy desires.... Thou wanderest at will, now quickly, now slowly, across the green meadow, through the wood, over the grassy hill, or by the stream. Now here, now there ... thou handlest the hatchet, axe, scythe, or hoe.... To enjoy in sober comfort at almost all seasons, with thy dear children, the fruits of thine own tree, the tree planted by thyself, this brings a sweetness sweet beyond all others.'
These didactic writings, inspired by Virgilian Georgics, show a distinct preference for the idyllic.
Sannazaro's Arcadia went through sixty editions in the sixteenth century alone. Tasso reckoned with the prevalent taste of his day in Aminta, which improved the then method of dramatizing a romantic idyll. The whole poem bears the stamp of an idealizing and romantic imagination, and embodies in lyric form his sentimental idea of the Golden Age and an ideal world of Nature. Even down to its details Aminta recalls the pastorals of Longos; and Daphne's words (Act I. Scene 1) suggest the most feeling outpourings of Kallimachos and Nonnos:
And callest thou sweet spring-time
The time of rage and enmity,
Which breathing now and smiling,
Reminds the whole creation,
The animal, the human,
Of loving! Dost thou see not