Hillsboro People

By orange grove and palm-tree, we walked the southern shore, Each day more still and golden than was the day before. That calm and languid sunshine! How faint it made us grow To look on Hemlock Mountain when the storm hangs low! To see its rocky pastures, its sparse but hardy corn, The mist roll off its forehead before a harvest morn; To hear the pine-trees crashing across its gulfs of snow Upon a roaring midnight when the whirlwinds blow. Tell not of lost Atlantis, or fabled Avalon; The olive, or the vineyard, no winter breathes upon; Away from Hemlock Mountain we could not well forego, For all the summer islands where the gulf tides flow.