Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/64
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
PURCHASE
[Certain letters written by Lorenzo de Medici are sold at auction.]
They shall come in and chat, their purses hid,
The men who hold rare things and gently smile,
They shall disturb frail, musty sheets and bid
A fortune for this letter or gray file
Of parchment, nobly written by the hand
That loved to gleam in gems and curious rings,
Point out a man for death—give castles, land,
Or rest on ermined shoulders of tall kings
And through the room, as from an unsealed urn,
Shadows will drift, faint shapes of Florence—dead,
Born of these records men shall lift and turn,
Knowing as he, who gave the artists bread
For white madonnas, saints, God's cloudy throne,
A man may buy what he can never own!
The men who hold rare things and gently smile,
They shall disturb frail, musty sheets and bid
A fortune for this letter or gray file
Of parchment, nobly written by the hand
That loved to gleam in gems and curious rings,
Point out a man for death—give castles, land,
Or rest on ermined shoulders of tall kings
And through the room, as from an unsealed urn,
Shadows will drift, faint shapes of Florence—dead,
Born of these records men shall lift and turn,
Knowing as he, who gave the artists bread
For white madonnas, saints, God's cloudy throne,
A man may buy what he can never own!
Harper's MagazineHortense Flexner
A HILLSIDE THAW
To think to know the country and not know
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow.
As often as I've seen it done before
I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.
It looks as if some magic of the sun
Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor
And the light breaking on them made them run.
But if I thought to stop the wet stampede,
And caught one silver lizard by the tail,
And put my foot on one without avail,
And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneed
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow.
As often as I've seen it done before
I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.
It looks as if some magic of the sun
Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor
And the light breaking on them made them run.
But if I thought to stop the wet stampede,
And caught one silver lizard by the tail,
And put my foot on one without avail,
And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneed
49