Page:Keats - Poetical Works, DeWolfe, 1884.djvu/182

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Why were they proud? Because fair orange-mounts
 * Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs?

Why were they proud? Because red-lined accounts
 * Were richer than the songs of Grecian years?

Why were they proud? again we ask aloud, Why in the name of Glory were they proud?

Yet were these Florentines as self-retired
 * In hungry pride and gainful cowardice,

As two close Hebrews in that land inspired,
 * Paled in and vineyarded from beggar-spies;

The hawks of ship-mast forests—the untired
 * And pannier'd mules for ducats and old lies—

Quick cat's-paws on the generous stray-away,— Great wits in Spanish, Tuscan, and Malay.

How was it these same leger-men could spy
 * Fair Isabella in her downy nest?

How could they find out in Lorenzo's eye
 * A straying from his toil? Hot Egypt's pest

Into their vision covetous and sly!
 * How could these money-bags see east and west?

Yet so they did—and every dealer fair Must see behind, as doth the hunted hare.

O eloquent and famed Boccaccio!
 * Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon,

And of thy spicy myrtles as they blow,
 * And of thy roses amorous of the moon,