A poem by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941):

Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

I get stuck somewhere on the “desert dand of dead habit” as I see sand contantly changing and evolving while a stream is burdened by following a familiar path (thus it is a stream, rather than a sea or ocean). Heraclitus would probably disagree, though, as he said you can never step into the same stream twice; it, and you, have undergone countless changes.

Incidentally, I also found a site where you can hear and/or watch actor Martin Sheen read it aloud, “at a rally for Appalachia in Athens County, Ohio”. Sheen does a fine job with this politically charged commentary on political security, but something tells me he is slightly off the poet-to-poem connection. Maybe Sheen would have been more suited for a more self-reflective theme like Shatner’s “Has Been” collection.