Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Amelioration and the Future, Man's Noble Tasks

Fall, fall, ye mighty temples to the ground:
            Not in your sculptured rise
            Is the real exercise
Of human nature's brightest power found.

'Tis in the lofty hope, the daily toil,
            'Tis in the gifted line,
            In each far thought divine,
That brings down Heaven to light our common soil.

'Tis in the great, the lovely, and the true;
            'Tis in the generous thought,
            Of all that man has wrought,
Of all that yet remains for man to do.