e floor shook. Then to her work she went;
And stood him on his feet in hose and shoon;
And purse and gilded girdle 'neath the fur
That drapes his goodly limbs, she buckles on;
Then bids the singers and sweet music stir,
And showeth him to ladies for a boon
And all who in that following went with her.

At this point the poem is abruptly broken. The manuscript from which
these sonnets are taken states they are a fragment. Had the
remaining twelve been preserved to us, we should probably have
possessed a series of pictures in which the procession to church
would have been portrayed, the investiture with the sword, the
accolade, the buckling on of the spurs, and the concluding sports
and banquets. It is very much to be regretted that so interesting,
so beautiful, and so unique a monument of Italian chivalry survives
thus mutilated. But students of art have to arm themselves
continually with patience, repressing the sad thoughts engendered in
them by the spectacle of time's unconscious injuries.

It is certain that Folgore would have written at least one sonnet on
the quality of courtesy, which in that age, as we have learned from
Matteo Villani, identified itself in the Italian mind with
liberality. This identification marks a certain degradation of the
chivalrous ideal, which is characteristic of Italian manners. One of
Folgore's miscellaneous sonnets shows how sorely he felt the
disappearance of this quality from the midst of a society bent daily
more and more upon material aims. It reminds us of the lamentable
outcries uttered by the later poets of the fourteenth century,
Sacchetti, Boccaccio, Uberti, and others of less fame, over the
decline of their age.

Courtesy! Courtesy! Courtesy! I call:
But from no quarter comes there a reply.
They who should show her, hide her; wherefore I
And whoso needs her, ill must us befall.
Greed with his hook hath ta'en men one and all,
And murdered every grace that dumb doth lie:
Whence, if I grieve, I know the reason why;
From you, great men, to God I make my call:
For you my mother Courtesy have cast
So low beneath your feet she there must bleed;
Your gold remains, but you're not made to last:
Of Eve and Adam we are all the seed:
Able to give and spend, you hold wealth fast:
Ill is the nature that rears such a breed!

Folgore was not only a poet of occasion and compliment, but a
political writer, who fully e