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 | Leaves of grass. |  |
LONGINGS FOR HOME.
O MAGNET-SOUTH! O glistening,
perfumed South! My
South!
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!
O dear to me my birth-things — All moving things, and the trees where I was born — the grains, plants, rivers;
Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of silvery sands, or through swamps;
Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altama- haw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa, and the Sabine;
O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my Soul to haunt their banks again;
Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes — I float on the Okeechobee — I cross the hummock land, or through pleasant openings, or dense forests;
I see the parrots in the woods — I see the papaw tree and the blossoming titi;
Again, sailing in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia — I coast up the Carolinas,
I see where the live-oak is growing — I see where the yellow-pine, the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto;
I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico Sound
through an inlet,
and dart my vision inland;
O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp !
The cactus, guarded with thorns — the laurel-tree, with large white flowers;
The range afar — the richness and barrenness — the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss,
The piney odor and the gloom — the awful natural stillness, (Here in these dense swamps the free- booter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has his conceal'd hut;)
O the strange fascination of these half-known, half- impassable swamps, infested by reptiles, re- sounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake;
The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon — singing through the moon-lit night,
The humming-bird, the wild-turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;
A Tennessee corn-field — the tall, graceful, long-leav'd corn — slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels — with beautiful ears, each well-sheath'd in its husk;
An Arkansas prairie — a sleeping lake, or still bayou;
O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs — I can stand them not — I will depart;
O to be a Virginian, where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!
O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Ten- nessee, and never wander more!
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!
O dear to me my birth-things — All moving things, and the trees where I was born — the grains, plants, rivers;
Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of silvery sands, or through swamps;
Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altama- haw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa, and the Sabine;
O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my Soul to haunt their banks again;
Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes — I float on the Okeechobee — I cross the hummock land, or through pleasant openings, or dense forests;
I see the parrots in the woods — I see the papaw tree and the blossoming titi;
Again, sailing in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia — I coast up the Carolinas,
I see where the live-oak is growing — I see where the yellow-pine, the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto;
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O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp !
The cactus, guarded with thorns — the laurel-tree, with large white flowers;
The range afar — the richness and barrenness — the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss,
The piney odor and the gloom — the awful natural stillness, (Here in these dense swamps the free- booter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has his conceal'd hut;)
O the strange fascination of these half-known, half- impassable swamps, infested by reptiles, re- sounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake;
The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon — singing through the moon-lit night,
The humming-bird, the wild-turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;
A Tennessee corn-field — the tall, graceful, long-leav'd corn — slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels — with beautiful ears, each well-sheath'd in its husk;
An Arkansas prairie — a sleeping lake, or still bayou;
O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs — I can stand them not — I will depart;
O to be a Virginian, where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!
O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Ten- nessee, and never wander more!
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| Leaves of grass. | |