Most of them also occur when he is on the canvas, and are a background to his thought.

Moreover, they are not set descriptions; they are flashed out, as it were, in a few lines, as if they came by chance, and are not pursued into detail.

Indeed, they are not done so much for the love of Nature herself, as for passing illustrations of Sordello's ways of thought and feeling upon matters which are not Nature.

As such, even in a mediaeval poem, they are excusable.

And vivid they are in colour, in light, in reality.