Among the worst of men that ever lived. However, we did seriously attend, A little space we let our thoughts ascend, Experienced our religion and confessed ’T was good for us to be there,—be anywhere. Then to a heap of apples we addressed, And cleared a five-rail fence with hand on the topmost rider _sine_ care. Then our Icarian thoughts returned to ground, And we went on to heaven the long way round. What’s the railroad to me? I never go to see Where it ends. It fills a few hollows, And makes banks for the swallows; It sets the sand a-flowing, And blackberries a-growing.[53] _Aug. 31._ TALL AMBROSIA Among the signs of autumn I perceive The Roman wormwood (called by learned men _Ambrosia elatior_, food for gods, For by impartial science the humblest weed Is as well named as is the proudest flower) Sprinkles its yellow dust over my shoes As I brush through the now neglected garden. We trample under foot the food of gods And spill their nectar in each drop of dew. My honest shoes, fast friends that never stray Far from my couch, thus powdered, countrified, Bearing many a mile the marks of their adventure, At the post-house disgrace the Gallic gloss Of those well-dressed ones who no morning dew Nor Roman wormwood ever have gone through, Who never walk, but are _transported_ rather, For what old crime of theirs I do not gather. The gray blueberry bushes, venerable as oaks,—why is not their fruit poisonous? Bilberry called _Vaccinium corymbosum_; some say _amœnum_, or blue bilberry, and _Vaccinium disomorphum_ Mx., black bilberry. Its fruit hangs on into September, but loses its wild and sprightly taste. Th’ ambrosia of the Gods’s a weed on earth, Their nectar is the morning dew which on- Ly our shoes taste, for they are simple folks. ’T is very fit the ambrosia of the gods Should be a weed on earth, as nectar is The morning dew which our shoes brush aside; For the gods are simple folks, and we should pine upon their humble fare. The purple flowers of the humble trichostema mingled with the wormwood, smelling like it; and the spring-scented, dandelion-scented primrose, yellow primrose. The swamp-pink (_Azalea viscosa_), its now withered pistils standing out. The odoriferous sassafras, with its delicate green stem, its three-lobed leaf, tempting the traveller to bruise it, it sheds so rare a perfume on him, equal to all the spices of the East. Then its rare-tasting root bark, like nothing else, which I used to dig. The first navigators freighted their ships with it and deemed it worth its weight in gold. The alder-leaved clethra (_Clethra alnifolia_), sweet-smelling queen of the swamp; its long white racemes.