of the
white swans swimming down through the silvery Mincio;
and,
from the green pastures where sleeps Bianore, the sound of Virgilius' voice;
and of the
face stern and grand looking out from the tower of the Scaligers,
centuries of literary history seem to pass before our eyes in living procession.
Most tender of all these tributes of the poet, interweaving the memory of his revered predecessors and masters with the nature loved by them, and by himself for them, is the sonnet addressed to Petrarch [XXIII]:
If far from turbid thoughts and gloomy mood.
It is as delicate as the odour of jessamine