But it the building's emphasis on loss - the absence of the 88 sculptures exhibited in London - that gives it a poignancy few other museums have.
I agree with Christopher Hitchens. Give them back.
* * *
Cold is the heart, fair Greece, that looks on thee,
Nor feels as lovers o'er the dust they loved ;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred!
Lord Byron
Childe Harold, Canto II, Verse XV
Cold is the heart, fair Greece, that looks on thee,
Nor feels as lovers o'er the dust they loved ;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred!
Lord Byron
Childe Harold, Canto II, Verse XV
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