This knows the admiring worlds and this the Sun,
That did with envy and amazement see
His equal course with equal glory run
Wide earth around; which now accomplished, he,
From heaven observant of the world he won,
Smiling inquires, 'And toiled I thus for thee?' "
Giovanni della Casa (1500–56) emulated Caro in the nobility of his style, which would scarcely have been expected, considering the licentious character of some of his verse and his ecclesiastical profession. He does, however, sometimes attain a dignity and gravity which, apart from the beauty of his diction, lift him high out of the crowd of Petrarchists; nor are his themes invariably amorous. His Galateo, a treatise on politeness, has earned him the name of the Italian Chesterfield. He would have attained greater eminence as a man of letters but for the distractions of politics and business, which he deplores in the following sonnet:
"To woodland fount or solitary cave
In sunlit hour I plained my amorous teen;
Or wove by light of Luna's lamp serene
My song, while yet to song and love I clave;
Nor by thy side the sacred steep to brave
Refused, where rarely now is climber seen;
But cares and tasks ungrateful intervene,
And like the weed I drift upon the wave.
And idly thus my barren hours are spent
In realms of fountain and of laurel void,
Where biit vain tinsel is accounted blest.
Forgive, then, if not wholly unalloyed
My pleasure to behold thee eminent
On pinnacle no other foot hath prest."
Angelo di Costanzo (1507–91), already noticed as an historian, is another example of a writer of sonnets who
