Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My FancyWhitman, Walt
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Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy
Whitman, Walt
American literature
Wild azalea, dandelions wild honeysuckle, yarrow, wild roses, coreopsis,
golden rod, wild pea, larkspur, woodbine, early crocus, elderberry,
sweet flag, (great patches of it,) poke-weed, creeper, trumpet-flower,
sun-flower, scented marjoram, chamomile, snakeroot, violets, Solomon's
seal, clematis, sweet balm, bloodroot mint, (great plenty,) swamp
magnolia, wild geranium, milk-weed, wild heliotrope, wild daisy,
(plenty,) burdock, wild chrysanthemum.
A CIVILITY TOO LONG NEGLECTED
The foregoing reminds me of something.
As the individualities I would mainly portray have certainly been
slighted by folks who make pictures, volumes, poems, out of them--as
a faint testimonial of my own gratitude for many hours of peace and
comfort in half-sickness, (and not by any means sure but they will
somehow get wind of the compliment,) I hereby dedicate the last half of
these Specimen Days to the
bees, glow-worms, (swarming millions
black-birds, of them indescribably
dragon-flies, strange and beautiful at night
pond-turtles, over the pond and creek,)
mulleins, tansy, peppermint, water-snakes,
moths, (great and little, some crows,
splendid fellows,) millers,
mosquitoes, cedars,
butterflies, tulip-trees, (and all other trees,)
wasps and hornets, and to the spots and memories
cat-birds, (and all other birds,) of those days, and the creek.
DELAWARE RIVER--DAYS AND NIGHTS
_April 5, 1879_.-With the return of spring to the skies, airs, waters of
the Delaware, return the sea-gulls. I never tire of watching their broad
and easy flight, in spirals, or as they oscillate with slow unflapping
wings, or look down with curved beak, or dipping to the water after
food. The crows, plenty enough all through the winter, have vanish'd
with the ice. Not one of them now to be seen. The steamboats have again
come forth--bustling up, handsome, freshly painted, for summer work--the
Columbia, the Edwin Forrest, (the Republic not yet out,) the Reybold,
Nelly White, the Twilight, the Ariel, the Warner, the Perry, the
Taggart, the Jersey Blue--even the hulky old Trenton--not forgetting
those saucy little bull-pups of the current, the steamtugs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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