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Giacomo Leopardi's poetics is intertwined with a number elements from romanticism and classicism, with the classical influence being a lot less familiar to the public, and also neglected by the literary critics. This influence, especially present during poet's early years, appears within the thematic, technical and philosophical aspect of his poetry. Leopardi's poetry is permeated with the contrast between the “old ones” and the “new ones“, i.e. the antique period whose great names served as inspiration to the poet in many of his poems, and his contemporaries. This paper will show that acceptance of Romanticism, as the dominant choice that his poetry refers to, is a product of a long journey of self-reflecting and development of a complex thought, whose base, from the poet's early beginnings until the very end, relies on the deep conviction of a personal philosophy that never completely rejects classicism, and which he develops through his biographical element, which is dominant in his rich literal opus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]