Page:Poems·from·the·Port·Hills-Blanche·Edith·Baughan-1923.pdf/32

 While the long pine-plantations point us down, And frame, between their dusky branches, bright Vignettes and panel-pictures of the town The town! so seen, beneath ascending skies And deep in bloomy mist, how beautiful it lies!

O’er rock and tussock, up the steep and on! The gardens go, the last red roof has gone; Only the vault of Heaven, the hills’ bare brow, And space, and silence now! Far, far below, the whole spread city lies, Breathing, enhalo’d; the vast plain spreads round Its amplitude of vaguely-pattern’d ground, And far across, into a world of skies, Leaps the great, silver-white, Angelic Presence bright Of the long Alpstill city alike and plain, And marching mountain-chain Sweep to yon wide way-out, of sapphire sea

Ah! here is liberty; Here can the gaze go free! And, gazing with it, here May heart and mind see clear. Far now below lie all Humanity’s Close claims; and that which more than human is In us, awakes! and deeply grows aware Of that dear Other-One, with whom we share This Earth-life—’neath her robes of green and blue Our fellow-dust, our fellow-spirit too! Nature, Man’s Sister! whose activities, Though guided not, like his, Down nerve and muscle from desire and thought,