To The Times Editorials

Lovely Antiques, breathing in every line

The perfume of an age long passed away,

Wafting us back to 1829,

Museum pieces of a by-gone day,

You should not languish in the public press

Where modern thought might reach and do you harm,

And vulgar youth insult your hoariness,

Missing the flavor of your old world charm;

You should be locked, where rust cannot corrode

In some old rosewood cabinet, dimmed by age,

With silver-lustre, tortoise shell and Spode;

And all would cry, who read your yellowing page:

            “Yes, that’s the sort of thing that men believed

            Before the First Reform Bill was conceived!”