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.