Page:Petrach, the first modern scholar and man of letters.djvu/291

 cities, implanted in me by nature, and a love of sylvan life, which has led many of our friends to style me Sylvanus much more frequently than Francesco. Then the other name comes from the fact that there was one of the Cyclops who was called Monicus, that is to say, one-eyed, and there seemed a certain fitness in applying the name to you, since of the two eyes which we mortals all use, one to behold heavenly things and the other those of the earth, you have cast away that which looks earthward and are content to employ the nobler one alone.

The cave, where Monicus dwells in solitude, is Montrieux, where you are living your life in the midst of grottoes and woods. Or it may be taken for the very cave of Mary Magdalene, close by your monastery, the place where she passed her period of penitence, and where God lent the props of his grace to your vacillating heart and made you steadfast in the holy purpose which you had so often discussed with me.

For flocks and fields, which you are said to care for no longer, understand your fellow-men and their haunts, which you abandoned when you fled away into solitude. The statement that we had one and the same mother, and father too for that matter, is not allegory but naked truth. The word sepulchre is to be taken as referring to our final abode. The meaning is that heaven awaits you, but Tartarus me, unless divine mercy comes to my rescue. Or