The Mount Cook Country.

Here is beauty that's green and misty.
The grass is sweet, and the dew lies wet.
The trees lean down by tranquil water,
Cattle graze in the fields.
And yet My heart is sick for a wilder country,
Under a high and piercing sky,
Splash of snow in the high hill-passes,
Glacier lakes where the keas fly.
Soaring peaks, and the white snakes winding,
Down from the blinding summit's light.
Snakes that are coiled in glacial combat,
Moving the mountains with faith's own might.
For I am dreaming of tussock country,
The leaping snow-fed rivers that go By little lakes with a cold blue margin,
Down to the golden plains below.
Oh, though I never return to know them,
I shall remember until I die Splash of snow in the high hill-passes,
And the peaks against the blinding sky!

—Joyce West.

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