"Italy seems not to feel her sufferings," exclaims her impassioned poet; "decrepit, sluggish, and languid, will she sleep forever?
Will there be none to awake her?
Oh that I had my hands twisted in her hair!" ("Che suoi guai non par che senta; Vecchia, oziosa, e lenta.
Dormira sempre, e non fia chi la svegli?
Le man l' avess' io avvolte entro e capegli." Canzone xi.) Nor is it with less energy that he denounces against the Mahometan Babylon the vengeance of Europe and of Christ.

His magnificent enumeration of the ancient exploits of the Greeks must always excite admiration, and cannot be perused without the deepest interest, at a time when the wise and good, bitterly disappointed in so many other countries, are looking with breathless anxiety towards the natal land of liberty,--the field of Marathon,--and the deadly pass where the Lion of Lacedaemon turned to bay.
("Maratona, e le mortali strette Che difese il LEON con poca gente." Canzone v.) His poems on religious subjects also deserve the highest commendation.
At the head of these must be placed the Ode to the Virgin.

It is, perhaps, the finest hymn in the world.

His devout veneration receives an exquisitely poetical character from the delicate perception of the sex and the loveliness of his idol, which we may easily trace throughout the whole composition.
I could dwell with pleasure on these and similar parts of the writings of Petrarch; but I must return to his amatory poetry: to that he entrusted his fame; and to that he has principally owed it.
The prevailing defect of his best compositions on this subject is the universal brilliancy with which they are lighted up.

The natural language of the passions is, indeed, often figurative and fantastic; and with none is this more the case than with that of love.