MANCHESTER.
Go back a century on the town,
That o'er yon crowded plain,
With wealth its dower, and art its crown,
Extends its proud domain.
Upon that plain a village stood,
Lonely, obscure, and poor;
The sullen stream rolled its dull flood
Amid a barren moor.
Now, mark the hall, the church, the street,
The buildings of to-day;
Behold the thousands now that meet
Upon the peopled way.
Go, silent with the sense of power,
And of the mighty mind
Which thus can animate the hour,
And leave its works behind.
Go through that city, and behold
What intellect can yield,
How it brings forth an hundred-fold
From time's enduring field.
Those walls are filled with wealth, the spoil
Of industry and thought,
The mighty harvest which man's toil
Out of the past has wrought.
Science and labour here unite
The thoughtful and the real,
And here man's strength puts forth its might
To work out man's ideal.
The useful is the element
Here laboured by the mind,
Which, on the active present bent,
Invented and combin'd.
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