So multitudes have been forgot—
But drones or dunces, good for naught;
Like clinging parasites or burrs
Taking from others all they dared,
Yet little they for others cared
Except as pilferers.
Not so with that majestic man
The all-round antiquarian—
No model his nor parallel;
From selfishness inviolate
Are his achievements good and great,
And thus shall ages tell.
A love for the antiquities
His honest hold, his birthright is!
And things unheard of or unread,
Defaced by moth or rust or mold,
To him are treasures more than gold,
Ay, than his daily bread.
At neither ghost nor ghoul aghast
He echoes voices of the past,
And tones like melancholy knells
Of years departed to his ear
Are sweeter than of kindred dear,
Sweeter than Florimel's.
He delves through centuries of dust
To resurrect some unknown bust,
A torso, or a goddess whole;
Maybe like Venus, minus arms—
Haply to find those missing charms;
But not the lost, lost soul.
He dotes on aborigines
Who lived in caves and hollow trees,
And barters for their trinkets rare;
Exchanging with those dusky breeds
For arrow-heads and shells and beads
A scalplock of his hair.
Had he been born—thus he laments—
Along with other great events,
Coeval say with Noah's flood,
A proud relationship to trace
With Hittites—or with any race
Of blue archaic blood!
Much he adores that Pilgrim flock,
The same that split old Plymouth rock,
Their "Bay Psalm" when they tried to sing.
Devoid of metre, sense, and tune,
Who but a Puritanic loon
Could have devised the thing?
He revels in a pedigree,
The sprouting of a noble tree
'Way back in prehistoric times;
And for the "Family Record" true
Of scions all that ever grew
Would give a billion dimes.
There is a language fossils speak:
'Tis not like Latin, much less Greek,
But quite as dead and antiquate
Its silent syllables, and cold;
But ah, what meanings they unfold,
What histories relate!