Then cause of just complaining have you none. The remedy to this were soon applied, Would you be like the bridegroom to the bride: But, for you say a long descended race, And wealth and dignity, and power and place, Make gentlemen, and that your high degree 380 Is much disparaged to be match'd with me; Know this, my lord, nobility of blood Is but a glittering and fallacious good: The nobleman is he, whose noble mind Is fill'd with inborn worth, unborrow'd from his kind. The King of Heaven was in a manger laid, And took his earth but from an humble maid; Then what can birth, or mortal men, bestow? Since floods no higher than their fountains flow. We, who for name and empty honour strive, 390 Our true nobility from him derive. Your ancestors, who puff your mind with pride, And vast estates to mighty titles tied, Did not your honour, but their own, advance; For virtue comes not by inheritance. If you tralineate from your father's mind, What are you else but of a bastard kind? Do, as your great progenitors have done, And, by their virtues, prove yourself their son. No father can infuse or wit or grace; 400 A mother comes across, and mars the race. A grandsire or a grandame taints the blood; And seldom three descents continue good. Were virtue by descent, a noble name Could never villanise his father's fame; But, as the first, the last of all the line, Would, like the sun, even in descending shine; Take fire, and bear it to the darkest house, Betwixt King Arthur's court and Caucasus: If you depart, the flame shall still remain, 410 And the bright blaze enlighten all the plain: Nor, till the fuel perish, can decay, By nature form'd on things combustible to prey. Such is not man, who, mixing better seed With worse, begets a base degenerate breed: The bad corrupts the good, and leaves behind No trace of all the great begetter's mind. The father sinks within his son, we see, And often rises in the third degree; If better luck a better mother give, 420 Chance gave us being, and by chance we live. Such as our atoms were, even such are we, Or call it chance, or strong necessity: Thus loaded with dead weight, the will is free. And thus it needs must be; for seed conjoin'd Lets into nature's work the imperfect kind; But fire, the enlivener of the general frame, Is one, its operation still the same. Its principle is in itself: while ours Works, as confederates war, with mingled powers; 430 Or man or woman, which soever fails: And oft the vigour of the worse prevails. Aether with sulphur blended alters hue, And casts a dusky gleam of Sodom blue. Thus, in a brute, their ancient honour ends, And the fair mermaid in a fish descends: The line is gone; no longer duke or earl;