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"Wel can the wise poet of Florence,

That highté Dant, speken of this sentence:

Lo, in such maner rime is Dante's tale.

Ful selde upriseth by his branches

smale

Prowesse of man, for God of his goodnesse

Will that we claime of him our gentillesse:

For of our elders may we nothing claime

But temporal thing, that man may hurt and maime.

"Eke every wight wot this as wel as I,

If gentillesse were planted naturelly

Unto a certain linage down the line, Prive and apart, then wol they never fine

To don of gentillesse the faire office,

They mighten do no vilanie or vice.

"Take fire and beare it into the derkest hous

Betwixt this and the mount of Cau

casus,

And let men shut the dorés, and go

thenne,

Yet wol the fire as faire lie and

brenne

As twenty thousand men might it behold;

His office naturel ay wol it hold,
Up peril of my lif, til that it die.
"Here may ye see wel, how that
genterie

Is not annexed to possession,
Sith folk ne don their operation
Alway, as doth the fire, lo, in his
kind,

For God it wot, men may full often find

A lordé's son do shame and vilanie. And he that wol have prize of his genterie,

For he was boren of a gentil house, And had his elders noble and virtuous,

And n'ill himselven do no gentil dedes,

Ne folwe his gentil auncestrie, that

dead is,

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Yet oft it falls that many a gentle mind

Dwells in deformèd tabernacle drowned,

Either by chance, against the course of kind,

Or through unaptnesse in the substance found,

Which it assumèd of some stubborne ground,

That will not yield unto her form's direction,

But is perform'd with some foul imperfection.

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WHEN I love, as some have told,
Love I shall when I am old,

ye Graces! make me fit
For the welcoming of it.
Clean my rooms as temples be,
To entertain that deity;

Give me words wherewith to woo,
Suppling and successful too;
Winning postures, and withal,
Manners each way musical;
Sweetnesse to allay my sour
And unsmooth behavior:
For I know you have the skill
Vines to prune, though not to kill;
And of any wood ye see,

You can make a Mercury.

HERRICK.

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