Classic Poem

Antiquarians, filling their noses
With the aromatic dust of some episode in History;
How I pity them their aversion from the flowing vistas of the Future!
For they organize an epoch as if it were a hall for obsolete utensils;
And the blunt broad sword must be catalogued according to its postulated Period.

But to me that am no antiquary, and a most indifferent historiographer,
This Museum is a mortuary for departed passions:
And I'd barter all the brocaded farthingales in Conservation
For a single scolding word from great Eliza's lips.

In holograph documents of the Commonwealth
Are memories and ghosts from yellow-candled councils;
Yet what are these, and even the death-mask of the Protector,
Compared with the gruff murmur that came to some nodding secretary,
When in politic debate the voices of Cromwell and Milton mingled?

I have learnt this afternoon, from a case of headless costumes,
That the Queen, when she bustled into the Great Exhibition,
Was wearing a sprigged silk dress and a bonnet with ostrich feathers.
From these we may deduce the inches of a once-imperial waist-line:
But who shall recover those heart-beats of Victoria, Regina et Imperatrix ,
When she sailed into her Crystal Palace on the climacteric of a European culture?

It is four o'clock; and the London Museum is closing.
Outside, in the courtyard, a group of patriots lingers
To watch the young Heir to the Throne step into his hushed Rolls-Royce.
And I wonder, are they wiser than the Antiquarians?