"Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of misery,"
and to read the story of his last years there is to think of one of those green isles. These were days of calm, and the book of the Secret ends with the expression of hope for a deeper calm still. In due time it came, but, as the English Poet sang, after more than six centuries—
The love from Petrarch's urn
Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
A QUENCHLESS LAMP.
[1] Translation by H. Reeve.
[2] De rebus fam., vii. 7.
[3] The profile portrait, reproduced by kind permission of Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, publisher of Mr. E. J. Mills' book on Petrarch, is from Lombardo's copy of the De viris illustribus, finished about five years after the death of Petrarch, and is believed to be an authentic picture of him in later life.