To A Wealthy Man

You gave but will not give again     Until enough of Paudeens pence     By Biddys halfpennies have lain     To be some sort of evidence,     Before youll put your guineas down,     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,     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     Where wit and beauty learned their trade     Upon Urbinos windy hill,     Had sent no runners to and fro     That he might learn the shepherds will.     And when they drove out Cosimo,     Indifferent how the rancour ran,     He gave the hours they had set free     To Michelozzos latest plan     For the San Marco Library,     Whence turbulent Italy should draw     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.     Let Paudeens play at pitch and toss,     Look up in the suns eye and give     What the exultant heart calls good     That some new day may breed the best     Because you gave, not what they would     But the right twigs for an eagles nest!