Versi giovanili brings together works of various genres written between the stay in Venice and the end of the Republican Triennium which show a development from the love theme that dominated the Naranzi Collection and an opening towards family, political, existential and autobiographical themes.

The ode La Campagna (The Companion) is dedicated to Aurelio de’ Giorgi Bertola, a poet of “nature”, who Foscolo calls a “young poet” who follows “the genius, which inspires him”. Autobiographical tones also return in the section of verses entitled In morte del padre (In death of the father), composed seven years after the death of his parent and devoted to his mother: themes emerge that will assume important roles in Foscolo's poetry like remembrance, the sepulchre and the pain of separation.

But the affairs of the day called on him to make increasingly explicit political statements. In the ode A Dante (To Dante, 1795-6) he returned to the theme of youth and poetic genius, but the tribute to Dante, considered a poet-bard, concludes with a vibrant reference to the political situation and a polemical Alfieri-style reference “a que’ mostri / che tumidi d’orgoglio / siedono ingiusti in soglio” ("to those monsters/ who tumid with pride / unjustly sit on the throne").

Il mio tempo (My time), published in “Mercurio d’Italia” in the second half of 1796, was also political, the biblical inspiration and monastic theme taking nothing away from the polemical impetus of a work that aims to be a warning to the rulers, written at a time in which Bonaparte's troops had already arrived in Italy.

Finally, the free verse of Al Sole (To the Sun), published in the “Anno Poetico” of 1797, has a certain degree of importance with the classic theme of the return of the sun after the storm forming an allegorical vision of apocalyptic, pessimistic tones, interlaid with images of death and destruction.