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(From Moral Essays)
BUT all our praises why should lords engross? | |
| Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross: | |
| Pleased Vaga echoes through her winding bounds, | |
| And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds. | |
| Who hung with woods yon mountain’s sultry brow? | 5 |
| From the dry rock who bade the waters flow? | |
| Not to the skies in useless columns tost, | |
| Or in proud falls magnificently lost, | |
| But clear and artless, pouring through the plain | |
| Health to the sick and solace to the swain. | 10 |
| Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows? | |
| Whose seats the weary traveller repose? | |
| Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise? | |
| “The Man of Ross,” each lisping babe replies. | |
| Behold the market-place with poor o’erspread! | 15 |
| The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread: | |
| He feeds yon almshouse, neat, but void of state, | |
| Where age and want sit smiling at the gate: | |
| Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans blest, | |
| The young who labor, and the old who rest. | 20 |
| Is any sick? The Man of Ross relieves, | |
| Prescribes, attends, the medicine makes and gives. | |
| Is there a variance? Enter but his door, | |
| Balked are the courts, and contest is no more: | |
| Despairing quacks with curses fled the place, | 25 |
| And vile attorneys, now a useless race. | |
| Thrice happy man! enabled to pursue | |
| What all so wish but want the power to do! | |
| O, say what sums that generous hand supply? | |
| What mines to swell that boundless charity? | 30 |
| Of debts and taxes, wife and children clear, | |
| This man possessed,—five hundred pounds a year. | |
| Blush, grandeur, blush! proud courts, withdraw your blaze; | |
| Ye little stars! hide your diminished rays. | |
| And what? no monument, inscription, stone, | 35 |
| His race, his form, his name almost unknown? | |
| Who builds a church to God, and not to fame, | |
| Will never mark the marble with his name. | |
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