WE are what suns and winds and waters make us; <br />The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills <br />Fashion and win their nursling with their smiles. <br />But where the land is dim from tyranny, <br />There tiny pleasures occupy the place <br />Of glories and of duties; as the feet <br />Of fabled faeries when the sun goes down <br />Trip o’er the grass where wrestlers strove by day. <br />Then Justice, call’d the Eternal One above, <br />Is more inconstant than the buoyant form <br />That burst into existence from the froth <br />Of ever-varying ocean: what is best <br />Then becomes worst; what loveliest, most deform’d. <br />The heart is hardest in the softest climes, <br />The passions flourish, the affections die. <br />O thou vast tablet of these awful truths, <br />That fillest all the space between the seas, <br />Spreading from Venice’s deserted courts <br />To the Tarentine and Hydruntine mole, <br />What lifts thee up? what shakes thee? ’t is the breath <br />Of God. Awake, ye nations! spring to life! <br />Let the last work of his right hand appear <br />Fresh with his image, Man.<br /><br />Walter Savage Landor<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-invocation-3/
