Let My Country Awake

by Rabindranath Tagore (who became Asia's first Nobel Laureate when he was awarded the 1913 Prize in Literature).

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.

May my country likewise awaken to such a morning.