As some staunch citizen of wit and worth

In manhood’s prime surveys his life from birth;

Casts o’er the changing scene a backward glance,

Content to mark the well-spent years’ advance;

Our patriot page tonight the past reviews,

Pleas’d with the bays that justly crown THE NEWS:

Exulting columns each bright year revive,

And proudly cry, “THE NEWS is twenty-five!”

Who but with satisfaction must commend

The right’s bold champion, and the people’s friend?

First in the fray to guard the public weal,

And first to mirror what the public feel;

To homes a teacher, and to all a guide,

Alert to serve mankind on Virtue’s side:

Its voice by factions and by mobs unsway’d,

Unfetter’d by the chains that gold hath made:

No man too humble to partake its smile

And none too learned to approve its style;

Uncurb’d in thought, devoted to the free,

The chosen mouthpiece of Democracy.

Scornful the pow’r of servile fear to own,

It bows to Justice, and to that alone!

Let vaunting rivals seek with proud intent

To shape a war, or mould a government;

Stir the slow currents of patrician hate,

And slight the people to exalt the state.

Let baser minds debauch the yellow page

With maudlin filth and half-seditious rage,

Or daub those mirthless shocks to sense and eye—

“Cartoons” that look like naught in earth or sky;

Our modest sheet the wiser plan pursues,

And gives the reader what it is—THE NEWS!

Auspicious Clio! whose unfading scroll

Preserves the past, and keeps the record whole,

Who twines with myrtle those deserving brows

That hold the spark which genuine worth endows;

Retrace the road of time, and shew again

THE NEWS, like Pallas, born from HEATON’S brain;

Recall th’ ensuing years and wider plan,

As the young daily led Progression’s van;

With loving care its rising path display;

Point out the boons it strow’d along the way;

Tell how its pages, with precision writ,

Increas’d in service as they grew in wit;

Nor fail the genius of the whole to crown,

But grant the stateliest wreath of all to BROWN!

Such is the past and presernt; here the tale

Falls to the Sibyl since the Muses fail:

What new Cumaean, in prediction bold,

Shall tell of half the future ages hold;

Of greener laurels for good deeds well done,

And lasting fame by rigid Justice won?

If brave Integrity commands the field,

What will not soon to such pure pages yield?

What rival is with equal care design’d

To serve the race, and lift the gen’ral mind?

A monarch’s might the potent press commands,

And might means arrogance in common hands;

Rare is that pen, unlur’d by fame or pelf,

Which moves unsullied, close to Virtue’s self.

But this THE NEWS can claim, and with it reach

The public vision, to advise and teach;

Whilst in each part of life the precepts fall

With aptness and amenity to all.

The grateful town with cordial warmth reveres

The time-tried friend of five-and-twenty years,

And fondly hopes, that as in ages past,

Each fruitful twelvemonth may outrank the last!