The essay presents a philological and intertextual interpretation of La morte meditata, a short sequence of poems included in Sentimento del Tempo. Starting from Petrarch’s Triumphus Mortis, through an articulated re-interpretation based on the fundamental words of his entire work (‘memory’, ‘dream’, ‘death’), Ungaretti recreates a new discourse about memory, which introduces to the new poetry of La Terra Promessa