Deep in the crouching mist, lie the mountains.

Climbing the mountains are forests

Of rhododendron, spruce and deodar -

Trees of God, we call them - soughing

In the wind from Kumaon and Garhwal;

And the snow leopard moan softly

Where the herdsmen pass, their lean sheep cropping

Short winter grass

And clinging to the sides of the mountains,

The small stone houses of Garhwal,

Their thin fields of calcinated soil torn

From the old spirit-haunted rocks.

Pale women plough, they laugh at the thunder,

As their men go down to the plains;

Little grows on the beautiful mountains

In the east wind.

There is hunger of children at noon; and yet

There are those who sing of the sunset

And the gods and glories of Himaal,

Forgetting that no one eats sunsets.

Wonder, then, at the absence of the old men;

For some grow old at their mother's breasts,

In cold Himaal.