Page:The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats, 1899.djvu/148

112 Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk,

Unknown of any, free from whispering tale.

Ah! better had it been for ever so,

Than idle ears should pleasure in their woe.

Were they unhappy then?—It cannot be—

Too many tears for lovers have been shed,

Too many sighs give we to them in fee,

Too much of pity after they are dead,

Too many doleful stories do we see,

Whose matter in bright gold were best be read;

Except in such a page where Theseus' spouse

Over the pathless waves towards him bows.

But, for the general award of love,

The little sweet doth kill much bitterness;

Though Dido silent is in under-grove,

And Isabella's was a great distress,

Though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove

Was not embalm'd, this truth is not the less—

Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers,

Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.

With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,

Enriched from ancestral merchandise,

And for them many a weary hand did swelt

In torched mines and noisy factories,

And many once proud-quiver'd loins did melt

In blood from stinging whip;—with hollow eyes

Many all day in dazzling river stood,

To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,

And went all naked to the hungry shark;

For them his ears gush'd blood; for them in death

The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark

Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe

A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:

Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel,

That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

Why were they proud? Because their marble founts

Gush'd with more pride than do a wretch's tears?—

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.