Wanaka Holiday

Valley and scarp, fierce desert and poplar shade;
The lake half pond, half ocean the wind has made;
Far off, beyond Glendhu Bay, silent white-throned Aspiring:
At hand, campers and cribs, bathers, and boats for hiring.

Molten and bare the hills; the rivers rage in their beds:
By the dusty road are blues and yellows and reds
Of bugloss and furred mullein, stonecrop and centaury,
And on that pine-warm island the wild strawberry.

We, visitors or inhabitants, pass through:
Splendour remains, indifferent to what we do.
Peak, ridge, and pilgrim waters still remote, untamed,
Charted but all intractable, anonymous though named.