Explore "How Lisa loved the King" by George Eliot on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Six hundred years ago, in Dante's time, / Before his cheek was furrowed by deep rhyme; / When Europe, fed afresh from Eastern story, / Was like a garden tangled with the glory / Of flowers hand-planted and of flowers air-sown, / Climbing and trailing, budding and full-blown, / Where purple bells are tossed amid pink stars, / And springing blades, green troops in innocent wars, / Crowd every shady spot of teeming earth, / Making invisible motion visible birth, --
Six hundred years ago, Palermo town / Kept holiday. A deed of great renown, / A high revenge, had freed it from the yoke / Of hated Frenchmen; and from Calpe's rock / To where the Bosporus caught the earlier sun, / 'Twas told that Pedro, King of Aragon, / Was welcomed master of all Sicily, -- / A royal knight, supreme as kings should be / In strength and gentleness that make high chivalry.