To read and speak with elegance and ease, Are arts polite that never fail to please

From The Illustrated London Reading Book, 1851 and attributed to an otherwise unidentified Browne.

To read and speak with elegance and ease,
Are arts polite that never fail to please;
Yet in those arts how very few excel!
Ten thousand men may read—not one read well.
Though all mankind are speakers in a sense,
How few can soar to heights of eloquence!
The sweet melodious singer trills her lays,
And listening crowds go frantic in her praise;
But he who reads or speaks with feeling true,
Charms and delights, instructs, and moves us too.