University of Virginia Library

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!