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The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton

with an essay on the Rowley poems by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat and a memoir by Edward Bell

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I.

Would'st thou ken Nature in her better part?
Go, search the cots and lodges of the hind;
If they have any, it is rough-made art,

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In them you see the naked form of kind;
Haveth your mind a liking of a mind?
Would it ken everything, as it might be?
Would it hear phrase of vulgar from the hind,
Without wiseacre words and knowledge free?
If so, read this, which I disporting penned,
If naught beside, its rhyme may it commend.