The Rev. John Graves

The Rev. John Graves.

“Hail! Patient plodder in the useful mine of our antiquities:

Cleveland owes to thee

Honour, as one who made her History

From out the darkness of the Past to shine;

And evermore thy brows we will entwine 5

With bays that will not fade. Although no bard

To sing her greatness, yet thou labour’d hard,

In nervous prose, to make her name divine

In our land’s letters. Pioneer wert thou

For Ord to follow; and now I aspire, 10

To pen in prose, and sometimes tune my lyre

To sing, of Cleveland in the Past and Now.

May thy industrious labours, Graves to me

Prove such an example, that I equal thee!”

‘Peter Proletarius’ George Markham Tweddell

[Bards and Authors, p. 384 & Tractates No. 37 Cleveland

Sonnets (Fourth Series - 1890)]

Author of The History of Cleveland 1808 - More info to come.