104 MY DEVON YEAR 



Tamar's July dress is gold-bright clay set in meadow- 

 sweets, garlanded with woodbines, bryonie^, and the 

 trailing splendours of dog-roses and field-roses. These 

 briars mingle their pink and white in loving tangles 

 over the water ; while, ashore, the ragworts shake out 

 fire in stars and flashes ; the butterfly orchis brings 

 her scent, and the marsh orchis springs sprightly 

 beside her ; buttercups and daisies and little variegated 

 vetchlings enamel the grass everywhere ; at hand the 

 purple loosestrife lifts his spires along the river ; the 

 golden petty whin and the meadow thistle also stray 

 hither ; and countless other buds and bells and starry 

 things make a home in every glade and sleepy 

 backwater. 



Follow a wood-pigeon's flight and you shall note 

 the low wood-crowned hills that rise to east and west 

 of the river. Here coverts, cunningly planted in 

 old time, spread along the undulating land ; and 

 little humped elms, dwarfed by winds from the sea, 

 stud each low hedgerow and climb to the horizon. 

 Young oaks abound in the copses, and they shine 

 under the sun contrasted with the neighbouring 

 pines. Above these woods stretch grazing lands, 

 and hay lands, and noble expanses of young corn. 



In Tamar's valley Contentment has found a haunt. 

 At set of sun, when these clay banks glow and the 

 murmuring shallows gleam with fire ; when the voice 

 of the water is a thanksgiving stealing upward and the 

 harmonious murmur of those things that only rivers 

 know ; then Content moves along the dewy grasses 



