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 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 the Okee-
　　　chobee, 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 blos-
　　　soming 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 freebooter carries his gun, and
　　　the fugitive has his conceal'd 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 Kentucky 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;
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 Tennessee and
　　　never wander more.