Page:Keats - Poetical Works, DeWolfe, 1884.djvu/196

184

Spirits of grief, sing not your "Well-a-way!"
 * For Isabel sweet Isabel, will die;

Will die a death too lone and incomplete, Now they have ta'en away her Basil sweet. Piteous she look'd on dead and senseless things,
 * Asking for her lost Basil amorously:

And with melodious chuckle in the strings
 * Of her lorn voice, she oftentimes would cry

After the Pilgrim in his wanderings,
 * To ask him where her Basil was; and why

'Twas hid from her: "For cruel 'tis," said she "To steal my Basil-pot away from me."

And so she pined, and so she died forlorn,
 * Imploring for her Basil to the last.

No heart was there in Florence but did mourn
 * In pity of her love, so overcast.

And a sad ditty of this story borne
 * From mouth to mouth through all the country pass'd:

Still is the burden sung—"O cruelty, To steal my Basil pot away from me!"