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Of worthy labour; and his name, deep sown
In thy now peaceful annals, the low sight
Of youth irresolute, in sloth upgrown,
May lead to purer vision; all his thought
Imbuing with the sense of the vast power
There lives in man, as man–a power fraught
With life to quicken every passing hour
Into divinest action, and to speed–
Such is the substance of the human flower–
Even in the lowliest mind, ambition’s seed.
Nor must the Muse forget the gentle Steel,
Who in the ranks of genius, Mentor mild,
Marshall’d the powers of progress rising here,
With Journalistic Science; prone to feel
How vast earth’s bondage from those powers exiled,
How great earth’s sorrows when usurped by fear.
He rose by effort to the worthiest fame;
One of the people, a brave son of toil,
Whose heart aspiring unto knowledge bound,
Was quickened into hope by its pure flame,
Spreading at length its fruit o’er all the soil
Of this fair country, all the Border round.
So flows thy list of worthies–not half done–
A list too long for such a line as this;
For thou than these, of daughter and of son,
Hast boasted many; and thy sires I wis
Could tell of thy renowned ones without end,
Fostering their pride and thine with every word,
And every word a truth, for virtue lies
In a green covert, whose fair boughs, soft stirred
With only its own breath, no motions lends
To the loud trumpeting which through the skies