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.
These are the last three verse of 'Hindoo and Mahommedan buildings' from Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book,1835. History hath but few pages—soon is told Man's ordinary life, Labour, and care, and strife, Make up the constant chronicle of old.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
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In this posthumous truncation of the poem, the location of the temples is not thought of importance. However, the message still stands: acts of generosity and kindness are worth more than the greatest monuments of man.