High Country by Ella McFadyen

Ever the crag and heather
   Were carpet to our feet;
How should I love the lowland airs,
   Or the clamour of the street?

Ever our ears had music
   Of the engirdling seas --
The old race of my father's house
   In the misty Hebrides.

Grant then the scarred hill's forehead
   Against a sweep of sky,
The flow'r-starred waste of lifted heath,
   And one bird wheeling high.

(Grey boulders of Kuring-gai,
   Bluff heads of Broken Bay),
The wind's tread and the sea's blue rim,
   The free, long, golden day.

And no song save the silence,
   Too rapt for praise or tears,
To soothe the clamant voice that calls
   Across a thousand years.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 October 1931

Author reference site: Austlit

See also.