From Highest Heights [poem by Philip Durham Lorimer]

[Editor: This poem by Philip Durham Lorimer was published in Songs and Verses by Philip Durham Lorimer: An Australian Bush Poet, 1901.]

From Highest Heights

I hold that from a mountain range
The vales are better seen,
And oft we may be much too near
The joys we love to glean.
But higher paths and nobler aims
Cast petty troubles out,
Though in the valleys, looking up,
Our skill to climb we doubt.

And just as loveliness is seen
From heights on glades below
When flow’rets bend o’er torrents hushed
Where silent rivers flow,
So can the valley’s voice be heard,
And clearer is its tone
For him who on the mountain stands,
Though wild winds round him moan.

In aspiration we complete
The highest work of God ;
Life upwards only can reveal
The soul within the clod ;
Then from above to us descends,
As manna once of old,
The Love divine that when thus sought
The spirit will enfold.

Herein has high conception best
With simple touch refined
The broken sob, the cry of sin,
The anguish of the mind ;
That when a human heart repents,
Jehovah’s love looks down.
And lo ! repentance, if sincere,
Receives a golden crown.

Source:
E. A. Petherick (editor). Songs and Verses by Philip Durham Lorimer: An Australian Bush Poet, William Clowes and Sons, London, 1901, pages 105-106