Oh Nature is perfect, wherever we stray, 'Tis man that deforms it with care. As love from thought to thought, from hill to hill, Directs me, when all ways that people tread Seem to the quiet of my being, foes, If some lone shore, or fountain-head, or rill Or shady glen, between two slopes outspread, I find--my daunted soul doth there repose.... On mountain heights, in briary woods, I find Some rest; but every dwelling place on earth Appeareth to my eyes a deadly bane.... Where some tall pine or hillock spreads a shade, I sometimes halt, and on the nearest brink Her lovely face I picture from my mind.... Oft hath her living likeness met my sight, (Oh who'll believe the word?) in waters clear, On beechen stems, on some green lawny space, Or in white cloud.... Her loveliest portrait there my fancy draws, And when Truth overawes That sweet delusion, frozen to the core, I then sit down, on living rock, dead stone, And seem to muse, and weep and write thereon.... Then touch my thoughts and sense Those widths of air which hence her beauty part, Which always is so near, yet far away.... Beyond that Alp, my Ode, Where heaven above is gladdest and most clear, Again thou'lt meet me where the streamlet flows And thrilling airs disclose The fresh and scented laurel thicket near, There is my heart and she that stealeth it. (Ode 17.) It is the same idea as Goethe's in _Knowest thou the Land_? Again: Alone, engrossed, the least frequented strands I traverse with my footsteps faint and slow, And often wary glances round me throw, To flee, should human trace imprint the sands. (Sonnet 28.) A life of solitude I've ever sought, This many a field and forest knows, and will. (Sonnet 221.) Love of solitude and feeling for Nature limit or increase each other; and Petrarch; like Dante, took scientific interest in her, and found her a stimulant to mental work. Burckhardt says: 'The enjoyment of Nature is for him the favourite accompaniment of intellectual pursuits; it was to combine the two that he lived in learned retirement at Vaucluse and elsewhere, that he from time to time fled from the world and from his age.' He wrote a book _On a Life of Solitude (De Vita Solitaria)_ by the little river Sorgue, and said in a letter from Vaucluse: 'O if you could imagine the delight with which I breathe here, free and far from the world, with forests and mountains, rivers and springs, and the books of clever men.' Purely objective descriptions, such as his picture of the Gulf of Spezzia and Porto Venere at the end of the sixth book of the _Africa_, were rare with him; but, as we have already seen, he admired mountain scenery. He refers to the hills on the Riviera di Levante as 'hills distinguished by most pleasant wildness and wonderful fertility.'[6]