Thank you for visiting SNEWPapers!
Sign up free
Staunton Spectator, And General Advertiser Poem March 2, 1837
Staunton, Virginia
What is this article about?
A poem arguing that the truly poor man is not the humble laborer but the one whose heart is empty of love and contentment.
Quality green show the numbers
Measured from the scan
— how cleanly the OCR engine read the characters
- Mean ink quality
- 98.0% The length-weighted average confidence across the OCR lines — the mean of exactly the per-line scores whose tails the two figures below report. Typical is 99%.
- Illegible ink
- 0.0% Text sitting in OCR-detected lines that scored below 80% confidence — very shaky reads. Weighted by line length, so one long bad line counts for more than a short one.
- Uncertain ink
- 0.0% Text in lines that scored 80–90% — somewhat shaky reads.
- Matches source
- 97.97% How closely the served text matches the raw OCR of the same boxes, letter by letter, after collapsing spacing and case. This measures agreement, not correctness: the OCR is often wrong and the extractor corrects it, so 100% does not mean perfect, and a low figure usually means poor scan text was rewritten rather than that text was lost (length vs source shows loss).
- Length vs source
- 101.17% Below 100% means text was dropped from the OCR; above means text was added to make it read.
Assembled by the extraction model
— whether the stitched-together text holds up; catches layout and segmentation errors, which the scores above cannot see
- Transcription confidence
- 97.0% (typical 96%) How cleanly the extractor could assemble what it was given. Low here with clean ink scores points at layout analysis — the characters were read correctly but grouped or ordered wrongly.
- Comprehension
- 95.0% Whether the piece reads coherently start to finish. Can stay high while transcription confidence drops, when only part of the component is affected.
Clipping
Full Text
THE POOR MAN
What man is poor? not he whose brow
Is bath'd in Heaven's own light,
Whose knee alone to God must bow,
At morning and at night--
Whose arm is nerv'd by healthful toil,
Who sits beneath the tree,
Or treads upon the fruitful soil,
With spirits calm and free.
Go--let the proud his gems behold,
And view the rich sparkling ray--
No silver vast, or yellow gold,
Can banish care away--
He cannot know the thrilling dream
Which smiles within the cot,
Where sunny brooks and faces gleam,
To cheer the poor man's lot.
What man is poor? not he whose brow
Is wet with Heaven's own dew,
Who breathes to God the heart-felt vow
Whose pledge is deep and true,
The morning calls his active feet
To no enchanting dome,
But evening and the twilight sweet
Shall light his pathway home.
And there is music in his ear,
In the glad voice of his child,
His wife with hurried steps draws near,
And spirit undefiled--
Then turn not from the humble heart,
Nor scorn its cheerful tone;
For deeper feelings there may start,
Than the proud have ever known:
What man is poor? not he whose brow
Is bath'd in Heaven's own light,
Whose knee alone to God must bow,
At morning and at night--
Whose arm is nerv'd by healthful toil,
Who sits beneath the tree,
Or treads upon the fruitful soil,
With spirits calm and free.
Go--let the proud his gems behold,
And view the rich sparkling ray--
No silver vast, or yellow gold,
Can banish care away--
He cannot know the thrilling dream
Which smiles within the cot,
Where sunny brooks and faces gleam,
To cheer the poor man's lot.
What man is poor? not he whose brow
Is wet with Heaven's own dew,
Who breathes to God the heart-felt vow
Whose pledge is deep and true,
The morning calls his active feet
To no enchanting dome,
But evening and the twilight sweet
Shall light his pathway home.
And there is music in his ear,
In the glad voice of his child,
His wife with hurried steps draws near,
And spirit undefiled--
Then turn not from the humble heart,
Nor scorn its cheerful tone;
For deeper feelings there may start,
Than the proud have ever known:
What sub-type of article is it?
Didactic
Lyric
What themes does it touch?
Moral Virtue
Satire Society
What keywords are associated?
Poverty
Wealth
Humble Heart
Contentment
Moral Poem
Poem Details
Title
The Poor Man
Subject
A Definition Of True Poverty And Wealth
Form / Style
Rhymed Verse
Key Lines
What Man Is Poor? Not He Whose Brow
Is Bath'd In Heaven's Own Light,
Then Turn Not From The Humble Heart,
Nor Scorn Its Cheerful Tone;