Classic Poem

Cease, if you love me, mother, cease to trace
Our long extraction to an antient race;
'Tis theirs alone who boast no inbred worth
To found their claim of honour on their birth,
And strive their want of virtue to supply
With glory borrow'd from old ancestry.
That all had ancestors the proof you give,
When you admit, that all have liv'd, or live:
If thousands find it difficult to trace
(Thro' lack of friends, or luckless change of place)
In whose pure veins their streams of kindred ran,
Are they less noble than the few that can?
The poorest tenant of the Libyan wild,
Whose life is pure, whose thoughts are undefil'd,
In titled ranks may claim the first degree,
For Virtue only is Nobility.