"Work is the best balm for all pains." And she took up the elaborate silk embroidery which she had begun for her poor, unfortunate friend, Anne of Cleves, Henry's divorced wife.

But the work occupied only her fingers, not her thoughts.
She threw it aside and seized her books.

She took Petrarch's Sonnets; and his love plaints and griefs enchained and stirred her own love-sick heart.
With streaming tears, and yet smiling and full of sweet melancholy, Elizabeth read these noble and tender poems.

It appeared to her as if Petrarch had only said what she herself so warmly felt.

There were her thoughts, her griefs.