Classic Poem

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 file
Of 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 kings.
And 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 bread
For white madonnas, saints, God's cloudy throne,
A man may buy what he can never own!