From "A Sicilian Story" by B. W. Procter

"Nature there in wildest guise
Stands undebased and nearer to the skies;
And 'midst her giant trees and waters wide
The bones of things forgotten, buried deep,
Give glimpses of an elder world."

1820, A Sicilian Story, st. ix. In Wright.

B. W. Procter's retelling of the tale of Lorenzo and Lisabetta (Decameron IV.5), who are Guido and Isabel in his poem, strays from the original less than some other Romantic efforts at adaptation. Implicit in the poem is "an intimate bond between man and Nature" (Wright 415) which is less significant in Boccaccio's story yet which clearly exists in a number of other tales of the Decameron. The above passage depicts Guido's account of America, where "man, untouched by civilisation, [is] in harmony with the primaeval forest" (ibid.). This intuitive sense of man's connection with Nature can explain Isabel's vision, which in Procter's poem juxtaposes the spirit of Guido with the basil-tree under which his head is buried.

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