_Soul, that such various things with various art Dost hearken, read, discourse, conceive and write; Fond eyes, and thou, keen sense framed exquisite To bear her holy message to the heart: Rejoice ye that it hath not been your part To gain the road so hard to keep aright Too late or soon for beacon of her light, Or guidance her imprinted steps impart. Now with such beam and such direction blest ’Twere shameful in brief way to miss the sign Pointing the passage to eternal rest. Upward, faint soul, thy heavenward path incline; Through clouds of her sweet wrath pursue thy quest, Following the seemly step and ray divine._ We do not know whether Petrarch had written any poetry before he tuned his lyre to hymn Laura. His beginnings (the exquisite initial sonnet being in fact the last written of any) are at first feeble and uncertain. It is not until arriving at Sonnet xxii. that he strikes a note worthy of his mature power, and he continues unequal up to about Sonnet lx., when masterpieces begin to occur with frequency; from this point onwards the proportion of absolutely insignificant poems is comparatively small. The interspersed sestines and ballate add little to his reputation; not so the canzoni, which are among his noblest productions. Traces of a chronological arrangement are evident; thus his secession to the Sorga gives birth to a group of sonnets with which those denouncing the Papal Court at Avignon are intimately connected; and in general the poems show a continuous development of style, but there are some signal exceptions. Towards the end of the first book his Muse would seem in danger of flagging, were she not stimulated by forebodings of the death of Laura. The pieces expressing this apprehension form a well-marked group, which may be associated with the doubts and fears which, after Laura’s decease, he tells us beset him on his last parting with her (1347): _The lovely eyes, now in supernal sphere Bright with the light whence life and safety rain, Leaving mine mendicant and mourning here, Flashed with new mood they seemed to entertain, Saying to these: Take comfort, friends most dear, Not here but elsewhere shall we meet again._ Mestica, the most critical of Petrarch’s editors, seems to think that he wrote no more on Laura in her lifetime after the great spiritual change which he supposes him to have undergone in 1343, when he wrote his dialogue with St. Augustine. We see but slight evidence of any such metamorphosis.