SRI LANKA HOLIDAYS : Dr. R. L. Spittal

Hail Lanka!

Let others belaud the ways of the West,

Or homeland or township, wherever it be,

However mighty, however blest -

Lanka, my Island, you are all to me.

When homeward I keel from travels afar,

And your mountains arise like wraiths from the sea,

By rose of the dawn or beam of the star:

Oh, Island mine, you are heaven to me.

And from the Peak and the table-land

That brave the blue dome's immensity,

From tree-girt shore and glittering sand,

The emerald Island calls to me.

Ancestral strains on her breezes blown

Steal out of her solitudes eerily:

The tales that are shrined in legend and stone

Are the songs the old Island sings to me.

But oh for the trails that the wild men tread,

For the hills that are haunts of the hiving bee,

For the twittering bill and the branching head:

Oh Island, wild Island, you are home to me.

Dr. R. L. Spittel, the surgeon, anthropologist, wildlife conservationist and author (1881-1969)

"He belonged to that generation of scholars which included Dr. Andreas Nell, Dr. Lucian de Zilwa and Dr. Paul E. Peiris - all of whom, though steeped in western culture, went off the beaten tracks of clubs and tennis courts into the wilderness where the Ceylonese habits, customs, traditions, arts and crafts were studied and revealed to the world,"
With a number of his books now being republished locally in English (Wild White Boy) and also translated into Sinhala (Leaves of the Jungle, Wild Ceylon), Spittel will be introduced to a new generation of readers. Hopefully his legacy will live on into the new millennium, and will induce Sri Lankans yet unborn to care for the country as he did.