Heather At Tongariro.

When I return at last from my long roaming,
To my own land beneath the lonely mountains,
Ah, then, once more my longing eyes shall see
The golden tussock on the hills and in the valleys.
Always in my dreams, my eyes have seen them—
The lonely peaks, white with their glittering snow.
Always my heart has bid my feet return
To my own land, amid the glowing tussock.
At night time, when the troubled winds are waking,
My heart goes sadly questing, but I do not see
The tussocks’ glow against the burnished sky,
But only the sombre purple of the foreign heather.
Oh, you, who come from cold lands far away—
Cold lands whose cradle-songs are twined about your hearts,
Leave me the tussock! Lest your feet returning,
Find on your Scottish moorlands, its glow among the heather.

—E. Mary Gurney.

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