1. ۱O MAGNET-SOUTH! O glistening, perfumed South! My South!
2. ۲O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!
3. ۳O dear to me my birth-things—All moving things, and the trees where I was
4. ۴ born—the
5. ۵ grains,
6. ۶ plants, rivers;
7. ۷Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of silvery
8. ۸ sands,
9. ۹ or
10. ۱۰ through swamps;
11. ۱۱Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee,
12. ۱۲ the
13. ۱۳ Coosa, and the Sabine;
14. ۱۴O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my Soul to haunt their banks again;
15. ۱۵Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes—I float on the Okeechobee—I cross
16. ۱۶ the
17. ۱۷ hummock land, or through pleasant openings, or dense forests;
18. ۱۸I see the parrots in the woods—I see the papaw tree and the blossoming titi;
19. ۱۹Again, sailing in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia—I coast up the Carolinas,
20. ۲۰I see where the live-oak is growing—I see where the yellow-pine, the scented
21. ۲۱ bay-tree, the
22. ۲۲ lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto;
23. ۲۳I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico Sound through an inlet, and dart my vision
24. ۲۴ inland;
25. ۲۵O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!
26. ۲۶The cactus, guarded with thorns—the laurel-tree, with large white flowers;
27. ۲۷The range afar—the richness and barrenness—the old woods charged with mistletoe
28. ۲۸ and
29. ۲۹ trailing moss,
30. ۳۰The piney odor and the gloom—the awful natural stillness, (Here in these dense swamps
31. ۳۱ the
32. ۳۲ freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has his conceal’d hut;)
33. ۳۳O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impassable swamps, infested by
34. ۳۴ reptiles,
35. ۳۵ resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the
36. ۳۶ wild-cat,
37. ۳۷ and
38. ۳۸ the whirr of the rattlesnake;
39. ۳۹The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon—singing through the
40. ۴۰ moon-lit
41. ۴۱ night,
42. ۴۲The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;
43. ۴۳A Tennessee corn-field—the tall, graceful, long-leav’d corn—slender,
44. ۴۴ flapping,
45. ۴۵ bright
46. ۴۶ green with tassels—with beautiful ears, each well-sheath’d in its husk;
47. ۴۷An Arkansas prairie—a sleeping lake, or still bayou;
48. ۴۸O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs—I can stand them not—I will depart;
49. ۴۹O to be a Virginian, where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!
50. ۵۰O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee, and never wander more!