On Truro Hills

Upon those dome like hills of sand A wonderous carpet has been laid, Rich as the rugs of Samarkand And gorgeous as some rare brocade Wrought on the looms of far Cathay Or by the shrines of Mandalay. It covers well those hills of sand That glaciers rounded long ago, Nor can the dyes of Samarkand Display a stranger, deeper glow Such tints of red and gray and green With gold and amber in between. To rolling slopes the lichens cling And tufts of bunch grass russet sere, Through them the murmurous breezes sing While clustering sweet fern, far and near Wafts spicy smells like incense o’er Those lonely hills from wood to shore The wild bearberry shyly twines Its sinuous length through grass and moss, How glossy are its clinging vines From green to rusty red. Across Its sheen the sunbeams dreamily Play like the waves upon the sea. Blueberry clumps in curving lines Mingle with waxen bayberry To trace their arabesque designs On richly wrought embroidery, With borders in the marshy sedge And fringing beach grass for the edge. A treeless waste it seems, but no The scrub oak, lichen crusted, cowers And dwarf pines, gnarled and twisted, grow By beach plum thickets, white with flowers A waste that blooms with rarer dyes Than jungles turn to tropic skies. And there are thread bare patches too That add more color to the heath For where the texture is worn through It shows the golden sands beneath, While in the afternoon’s slant rays All outlines blur in purple haze. Uncanny moorland, desolate And in the dusk how weirdly still, A landscape one can ne’er forget. O’er ghostly hollow wraithlike hill What timid moonsprites nightly flee The muttering demons of the sea! The ebbing seasons merely change That coverlet from day to day, By shifting, in their varied range From sober hues to some more gay, While from the sea and sky and air Fresh color splashes everywhere. That turf rough seeded by the wind And nurtured by the pensive sun, Is richer than the shawls of Ind, Or that famed carpet once begun By Jinns and Peris, known of yore, That through the air the Genii bore. Perhaps on some enchanted breeze From Kurdistan or Araby Those Genii over unknown seas Have borne this priceless tapestry, This fabric wrought in Faery land To beautify a barren strand. ’Tis woven on the loom of time Spun from the filaments of dreams, This magic carpet. Age nor clime Can match its pattern, or the streams Of color lavish Nature spills O’er Truro’s ancient, windswept hills