"Wel can the wise poet of Flor

ence,

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 lorde'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 virtu

Either by chance, against the course of kind,

Or through unaptnesse in the substance found,

Which it assumed of some stubborne ground,

That will not yield unto her form's direction,

But is perform'd with some foul imperfection.

SONNET.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,

For as you were, when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold

Have from the forest shook three summers' pride;

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned,

In process of the seasons have I

seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,

Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green.

Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dialhand,

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,

Ere you were born, was beauty's summer dead.

SHAKSPEARE.

TRUTH needs no color with his color fixed,

Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;

But best is best, if never intermix'd. SHAKSPEARE.

HYMN TO THE GRACES.

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