O glistening,
perfumed
South!
Whitman
(Surely it is alive!
)
How the trees rise and stand up--with strong trunks--with branches and
leaves!
Surely there is something more in each of the trees--some living soul.
O amazement of things! even the least particle!
O spirituality of things!
O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents--now reaching me and
America!
I take your strong chords--I intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them
forward.
I too carol the sun, ushered, or at noon, or, as now, setting,
I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and of all the growths of
the earth,
I too have felt the resistless call of myself.
As I sailed down the Mississippi,
As I wandered over the prairies,
As I have lived--As I have looked through my windows, my eyes,
As I went forth in the morning--As I beheld the light breaking in the east;
As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the
Western Sea;
As I roamed the streets of inland Chicago-whatever streets I have roamed;
Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.
I sing the Equalities;
I sing the endless finales of things;
I say Nature continues--Glory continues;
I praise with electric voice:
For I do not see one imperfection in the universe;
And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.
O setting sun! though the time has come,
I still warble under you unmitigated adoration.
_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,[1] 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 Altamahaw, 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 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 odour and the gloom--the awful natural stillness, Here in these
dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave
has his concealed hut;
O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impassable swamps,
infested by reptiles, resounding 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-leaved corn--slender,
flapping, bright green, with tassels--with beautiful ears, each
well-sheathed 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!
How the trees rise and stand up--with strong trunks--with branches and
leaves!
Surely there is something more in each of the trees--some living soul.
O amazement of things! even the least particle!
O spirituality of things!
O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents--now reaching me and
America!
I take your strong chords--I intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them
forward.
I too carol the sun, ushered, or at noon, or, as now, setting,
I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and of all the growths of
the earth,
I too have felt the resistless call of myself.
As I sailed down the Mississippi,
As I wandered over the prairies,
As I have lived--As I have looked through my windows, my eyes,
As I went forth in the morning--As I beheld the light breaking in the east;
As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the
Western Sea;
As I roamed the streets of inland Chicago-whatever streets I have roamed;
Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.
I sing the Equalities;
I sing the endless finales of things;
I say Nature continues--Glory continues;
I praise with electric voice:
For I do not see one imperfection in the universe;
And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.
O setting sun! though the time has come,
I still warble under you unmitigated adoration.
_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,[1] 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 Altamahaw, 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 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 odour and the gloom--the awful natural stillness, Here in these
dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave
has his concealed hut;
O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impassable swamps,
infested by reptiles, resounding 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-leaved corn--slender,
flapping, bright green, with tassels--with beautiful ears, each
well-sheathed 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!
