The Fourth Treatise - Page 2

A true Nobility.

I say that from one root
Each Virtue firstly springs,
Virtue, I mean, that Happiness
To man, by action, brings.

This, as the Ethics teach,
Is habit of right choice
That holds the means between extremes,
So spake that noble voice.

Nobility by right
No other sense has had
Than to import its subject's good,
As vileness makes him bad.

Such virtue shows its good
To others' intellect,
For when two things agree in one,
Producing one effect.

One must from other come,
Or each one from a third,
If each be as each, and more, then one
From the other is inferred.

Where Virtue is, there is
A Nobleman, although
Not where there is a Nobleman
Must Virtue be also.

So likewise that is Heaven
Wherein a star is hung,
But Heaven may be starless; so
In women and the young

A modesty is seen,
Not virtue, noble yet;
Comes virtue from what's noble, as
From black comes violet;

Or from the parent root
It springs, as said before,
And so let no one vaunt that him.
A noble mother bore.

They are as Gods whom Grace
Has placed beyond all sin:
God only gives it to the Soul
That He finds pure within.

That seed of Happiness
Falls in the hearts of few,
Planted by God within the Souls
Spread to receive His dew.

Souls whom this Grace adorns
Declare it in each breath,
From birth that joins the flesh and soul
They show it until death.

In Childhood they obey,
Are gentle, modest, heed
To furnish Virtue's person with
The graces it may need.

Are temperate in Youth,
And resolutely strong,
Love much, win praise for courtesy,
Are loyal, hating wrong.

Are prudent in their Age,
And generous and just,
And glad at heart to hear and speak
When good to man's discussed.

The fourth part of their life
Weds them again to God,
They wait, and contemplate the end,
And bless the paths they trod.

How many are deceived! My Song,
Against the strayers: when you reach
Our Lady, hide not from her that your end
Is labour that would lessen wrong,
And tell her too, in trusty speech,
I travel ever talking of your Friend.

CHAPTER I.

Love, according to the unanimous opinion of the wise men who discourse
of him, and as by experience we see continually, is that which brings
together and unites the lover with the beloved; wherefore Pythagoras
says, "In friendship many become one."

And the things which are united naturally communicate their qualities
to each other, insomuch that sometimes it happens that one is wholly
changed into