Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921/Purchase

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PURCHASE 
[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 fileOf 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 kingsAnd 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 breadFor white madonnas, saints, God's cloudy throne,A man may buy what he can never own!
Harper's MagazineHortense Flexner

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