The poem is dedicated to the memory of Peter Marsh,
who was born in Blantyre in 1926, and recently passed away in Devon.
He moved to Kenya in 1951 and served East African Railways and
Harbours as an engineer in various capacities, latterly as Acting Chief Civil
Engineer, until he left in 1976. He loved Kenya as his own.
My Country from verses by Dorothea Mackellar.
The love of field
and coppice,
of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods
and gardens
is running in your veins,
Strong love of
grey-blue distance
brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot
share it,
my love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt
country,
a land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain
ranges,
of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far
horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her
terror
the wide brown land for me!
An opal-hearted
country,
a wilful, lavish land
All you who have
not loved her,
you will not understand
Though earth holds
many splendours,
wherever I may die,
I know to what
brown country
my homing thoughts will fly.
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