In his songs, then, Petrarch describes real things—the beauty of Laura in all its details; her coldness and his suffering; and especially the conflicting feelings which tormented his soul. In his subjectivity, his psychological analysis of feelings, his use of poetry to express his own mental experiences; in his lovely descriptions of nature; and especially in his melancholy, the far-off anticipation of the "Weltschmerz,"[19] Petrarch is indeed the first modern lyrical poet.
He himself confidently expected immortality from his Latin works, which, alas! for the vanity of human expectations, are now forgotten by all except special students. He apparently looked with contempt on his Italian lyrics, yet this was only affectation, for even in his later years he carefully revised them. These songs and sonnets are still unsurpassed in Italian literature. Many, it is true, are artificial, and on account of puns, antitheses, and conceits are repugnant to modern taste; yet the large number of his best poems are exquisite pictures of womanly beauty, with a charming landscape as a background, all enveloped in an atmosphere of lovely poetry, full of tenderness, pathos, and genuine feeling. Above all, they are written in a style and with a harmony of numbers unknown till then and not surpassed since.
Petrarch's Italian poetry consists of some 375 sonnets, ballads, and songs (of which the vast majority are sonnets), and in the twelve chapters, or books, of the so-called Triumphs. These are, with but few exceptions, consecrated to the story of his love for a certain woman named Laura, concerning whose actual existence as much contest has been waged as over that of Beatrice. It seems now pretty definitely ascertained that Laura was no mere fancy-picture, but a real being. She was the daughter of Audibert de Noves, and the wife of Ugo de Sade, to whom she bore eleven children. She died April 6, 1348, probably of the pest, which then was raging. Petrarch saw her for the first time April 6, 1327, and for twenty-one years worshiped her from a respectful distance. There is little story or event in all these sonnets. Petrarch's love is not returned by Laura, he makes no progress in her affections, and his poems are devoted for the most part to descriptions of her beauty, coldness, and indifference, and his own state of wretchedness.
Among the many sonnets descriptive of Laura's beauty we may take the following, in which she is declared to be the most perfect example of Nature's handiwork:
"The stars, the elements, and Heaven have made
With blended powers a work beyond compare;
All their consenting influence, all their care,
To frame one perfect creature lent their aid.
Whence Nature views her loveliness displayed
With sun-like radiance sublimely fair;
Nor mortal eye can the pure splendor bear:
Love, sweetness, in unmeasured grace arrayed.
The very air illumed by her sweet beams
Breathes purest excellence; and such delight
That all expression far beneath it gleams.
No base desire lives in that heavenly light,
Honor alone and virtue!—fancy's dreams
Never saw passion rise refined by rays so bright."
In another sonnet he tells how he was affected the first time he saw her:
"Sun never rose so beautiful and bright
When skies above most clear and cloudless showed,
Nor, after rain, the bow of heaven e'er glowed
With tints so varied, delicate, and light,
As in rare beauty flash'd upon my sight,
The day I first took up this am'rous load,
That face whose fellow ne'er on earth abode—
Even my praise to paint it seems a slight!
Then saw I Love, who did her fine eyes bend
So sweetly, every other face obscure
Has from that hour till now appeared to me.
The boy-god and his bow, I saw them, friend,
From whom life since has never been secure,
Whom still I madly yearn again to see."
Macgregor.
Yet Laura is not only beautiful, but good; she unites in herself the highest excellencies of virtue as well as of beauty: