A TRAVELLER for seven days,
In dust and heat on stony ways,
I won last night these green-rayed islands
Above the brown surge of the veld,
These fluted forest-vales that belt
The sky-clipped Amatola Highlands:
Scenes where my youthful footsteps sped,
Long loved but long unvisited.

Rising at dawn in eager haste
I stared around, but all was waste:
Gaika and Hogsback triple-crowned
In stone-mute seas of mist were drowned;
Streams were submerged and woods also;
The waterfalls, that swiftly cast
Curved nets of iridescent light
From hill-barques to leafed-lakes below,
Were muffled in mist-billows vast
And lost as in a moonless night.

Some say that breath is but a mist,
Which hides from us what's loveliest:
That when we mortals cease to breathe
And melted is the cloudy veil,
Not time nor distance shall avail,
Nor swaddling mist, nor scabbard-night,
To dim our radiance or sheathe
Ultimate beauty from our sight.
— But, oh, I would this mist might rise
Revealing to my earth-born eyes
The heaven that here around me lies.