No painter gives a form That is not of his knowing; No tower leans above a stream That far away is flowing. How vile and incomplete Wealth is, let this declare However great the heap may be It brings no peace, but care. And hence the upright mind, To its own purpose true, Stands firm although the flood of wealth Sweep onward out of view They will not have the vile Turn noble, nor descent From parent vile produce a race For ever eminent. Yet this, they say, can be, Their reason halts behind, Since time they suit to noble birth By course of time defined. It follows then from this That all are high or base, Or that in Time there never was Beginning to our race. But that I cannot hold, Nor yet, if Christians, they; Sound intellect reproves their words As false, and turns away. And now I seek to tell, As it appears to me, What is, whence comes, what signs attest 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.