The Reason Why Poem by Anna Johnston MacManus

Because you brought the hills to me–
The dear hills I had never seen,
All sweet with heather down the braes,
And golden gorse between–

Where sings the blackbird in the dawn,
And where the blue lake-water stirs,
And where the slender wind-blown sedge
Shakes all its silver spurs.

Because you loved the country ways,
Whereon your happy feet were set.
Nor was the calmness of your days,
Stirred by one vexed regret.

But in your every homely word
I heard my unknown kinsfolk call
My roving heart to find its nest
Afar in Donegal.