Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PURCHASE, by HORTENSE KING FLEXNER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PURCHASE, by                    
First Line: They shall come in and chat, their purses hid
Last Line: A man may buy what he can never own!
Subject(s): Medici, Lorenzo De (1449-1492)


[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!





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