What pleads Lorenzo for his high-prized sports?

He pleads time’s numerous blanks; he loudly pleads

The straw-like trifles on life’s common stream.

From whom those blanks and trifles, but from thee?

No blank, no trifle, nature made, or meant. 80

Virtue, or purposed virtue, still be thine;

This cancels thy complaint at once, this leaves

In act no trifle, and no blank in time.

This greatens, fills, immortalizes all;

This, the bless’d art of turning all to gold;