Member Poem

this landscape that unfold before me
is never one i dare traverse, or with
my eyes traverse too long:
the shallows and crests of
tawny hills that rise and fall and
break upon the forest where
the silent sparrow sleeps –
i dare not pull a harrow through
these fields, lest i want
them harrowed – the folds and
steppes and valleys and the
bush’ed trail on the plateau that
gently rises as gentle gusts
reveal the north. ah –
no thickets there against that cliff;
so hardly a cliff for one so
gentle could not be a slope!
perched upon its precipice is
none but an unpicked rose that,
says my mind, surely draws its
humour from the earthy pools so
filled with mirth and health that
          i rejoice!

oh how i love this land –
how i love it! its quakes
rock me to sleep and to wake again,
and to remember where there is blood;
in which vein there is blood to spare.
but in which of its parts do i love
it best – its two ranges with
gardens hung, or the place from
where it issues life? nay, surely
i love it best when i hear its
sounds and wonder where they come from! 
these forests, hardly woods that
ran about a spring, are nothing –
and that spring is nothing.
oh how i love this land,
how i love the treasures i
cannot see or fathom!