| YOU gave but will not give again | |
| Until enough of Paudeen’s pence | |
| By Biddy’s halfpennies have lain | |
| To be ‘some sort of evidence,’ | |
| Before you’ll put your guineas down, | 5 |
| That things it were a pride to give | |
| Are what the blind and ignorant town | |
| Imagines best to make it thrive. | |
| What cared Duke Ercole, that bid | |
| His mummers to the market place, | 10 |
| What th’ onion-sellers thought or did | |
| So that his Plautus set the pace | |
| For the Italian comedies? | |
| And Guidobaldo, when he made | |
| That grammar school of courtesies | 15 |
| Where wit and beauty learned their trade | |
| Upon Urbino’s windy hill, | |
| Had sent no runners to and fro | |
| That he might learn the shepherds’ will. | |
| And when they drove out Cosimo, | 20 |
| Indifferent how the rancour ran, | |
| He gave the hours they had set free | |
| To Michelozzo’s latest plan | |
| For the San Marco Library, | |
| Whence turbulent Italy should draw | 25 |
| Delight in Art whose end is peace, | |
| In logic and in natural law | |
| By sucking at the dugs of Greece. | |
| |
| Your open hand but shows our loss, | |
| For he knew better how to live. | 30 |
| Let Paudeens play at pitch and toss, | |
| Look up in the sun’s eye and give | |
| What the exultant heart calls good | |
| That some new day may breed the best | |
| Because you gave, not what they would | 35 |
But the right twigs for an eagle’s nest!
December 1912. | |
