What though above the Schuylkill gleams
For him no shaft of fame,
What though amid these English streams
We find his unsought name!
We know his country was the earth,
His countrymen mankind;
And where his death or where his birth,
We need not seek or find.
Above the world his quiet mind
Poised on its wings of trust;
He lived for all, and left behind
The memory of the just.
Allotted by an unseen hand,
Time gives his work its dowers;
His soul, a Western empire grand,
His body, English flowers.
Self-sacrifice is never lost,
But bears its own reward;
They who for others leave the most,
Shall have the most from God.
His influence well has filled the earth.
He needs no marble tomb;
But fitly for his modest worth
The English daisies bloom.
William Penn, Quaker and founder of the Province of (later US state of) Pennsylvania, died in 1718.