“We have only to cast our eyes upon the map to recognize the topographical exactitude of this last expression. In fact, in all the upper part of its course, the Po receives a multitude of affluents, which converge towards its bed. They are the Tessino, the Adda, the Olio, the Mincio, the Trebbia, the Bormida, the Taro;⁠—names which recur so often in the history of the wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”

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Here the word love is repeated, as the word honor was in Canto IV 72. The verse murmurs with it, like the “moan of doves in immemorial elms.”