| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| An Invocation |
| | | Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) |
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| WE are what suns and winds and waters make us; | |
| The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills | |
| Fashion and win their nursling with their smiles. | |
| But where the land is dim from tyranny, | |
| There tiny pleasures occupy the place | 5 |
| Of glories and of duties; as the feet | |
| Of fabled faeries when the sun goes down | |
| Trip o’er the grass where wrestlers strove by day. | |
| Then Justice, call’d the Eternal One above, | |
| Is more inconstant than the buoyant form | 10 |
| That burst into existence from the froth | |
| Of ever-varying ocean: what is best | |
| Then becomes worst; what loveliest, most deform’d. | |
| The heart is hardest in the softest climes, | |
| The passions flourish, the affections die. | 15 |
| O thou vast tablet of these awful truths, | |
| That fillest all the space between the seas, | |
| Spreading from Venice’s deserted courts | |
| To the Tarentine and Hydruntine mole, | |
| What lifts thee up? what shakes thee? ’t is the breath | 20 |
| Of God. Awake, ye nations! spring to life! | |
| Let the last work of his right hand appear | |
| Fresh with his image, Man. | |
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