The Antiquarian.

Millions have been and passed from view     Benignity who never knew;         No aspiration theirs, nor aim;     Existence soulless as the clay     From whence they sprang, what right have they         To eulogy or fame?     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!     The earthquake is his best ally -     It shows up things he cannot buy,         And gives him raw material     For making mastodons and such,     Enough to beat that ancient "Dutch         Republic's Rise and Fall."     A piece of bone can never lie:     A rib, a femur, or a thigh         Is but a dislocated sign     Of something hybrid, half and half     Betwixt a crocodile and calf -         Maybe a porcupine.     The stately "Antiquarium"     Is his emporium, his home.         He wonders if when he is gone     Will people look with mournful pride     On him done up and classified,         And the right label on.     He dreams of an emblazoned page,     The calendar of every age         Down from Creation's primal dawn;     With archetypes of spears and bones,     And tons of undeciphered stones         Its illustrations drawn.     Labor a blessing, not a curse,     His hunting ground the Universe,         So much the more his nature craves     To sound the fathoms of the sea:     What mighty wonders there must be         Down in those hidden caves!     So toils this dauntless man, alert     Amid the ruins and the dirt,         That other men to endless day     Themselves uplifted from the clod     May see, and learn and know that God         Is greater far than they.     And thus, of mighty ken and plan,     The all-round antiquarian         Pursues his happy ministry;     And on the world's progressive track     Advances, always going back -         Back to antiquity.