Cavaliers and Poets

“Slender is my strength and my mind weak, but great is my expectation of help; borne up by such hope, I shall rush upon them with justice at my right hand.”– Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)

A useless craft, absurd,

Of no account, they say,

False, obscure, and lewd

Silly tales of pagan gods

Sweet with deadly sweetness,

Which fattens while The Worthy are consumed,

The zeal of God’s house hath eaten them up

(while, puffed up, they lay their sickles to the harvest of another)

poio, pois, fingo, fingis, poetes, exquisite lucutio

These triflers, they are ignorant,

And all they cast aside,

Is fervid, exquisite expression,

Invention of the mind.

Pure mental activity thus infused

With strange supernal inspiration.

A song in an age hitherto unpolished,

To render this discoursing  sonorous heard

That veil of fiction clothing naked truth

In garments fitting, laudable and fair.