Assertion that a tragedy exists

In any stoppage of benevolence,

Utility, devotion above all?

Benevolent? There never was his like:

For poverty, he had an open hand

... Or stop—I use the wrong expression here—

An open purse, then, ever at appeal;

So that the unreflecting rather taxed

Profusion than penuriousness in alms.

One, in his day and generation, deemed