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65

XVII. True Greatness.

Omne hominum genus in terris
Simili surgit ab ortu, &c

Thæt eorthwaran
Ealle hæfden
Fold-buende
Fruman gelicne. &c.

All men and all women on earth
Had first their beginning the same,
Into this world of their birth
All of one couple they came:
Alike are the great and the small;
No wonder that this should be thus;
For God is the Father of all,
The lord and the maker of us.
He giveth light to the sun,
To the moon and the stars as they stand;
The soul and the flesh He made one,
When first he made man in the land.
66

Wellborn alike are all folk
Whom He hath made under the sky;
Why then on others a yoke
Now will ye be lifting on high?
And why be so causelessly proud,
As thus ye find none are illborn?
Or why, for your rank, from the crowd
Raise yourselves up in such scorn?
In the mind of a man, not his make,
In the earth-dweller's heart, not his rank,
Is the nobleness whereof I spake,
The true, and the free, and the frank.
But he that to sin was in thrall,
Illdoing wherever he can,
Hath left the first lifespring of all,
His God, and his rank as a man:
And so the Almighty down-hurl'd
The noble disgraced by his sin,
Thenceforth to be mean in the world,
And never more glory to win.
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