< Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu
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Chants Democratic.
:In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding—the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk;
In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake—in summer visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming;
In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating slowly high beyond the tree-tops,
Below, the red cedar, festooned with tylandria—the pines and cypresses, growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat;
Rude boats descending the big Pedee—climbing plants, parasites, with colored flowers and berries, enveloping huge trees,
The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind;
The camp of Georgia wagoners, just after dark—the supper-fires, and the cooking and eating by whites and negroes,
Thirty or forty great wagons—the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from troughs,
The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees—the flames—also the black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling and rising;
Southern fishermen fishing—the sounds and inlets of North Carolina's coast—the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery—the large sweep-seines—the windlasses on shore worked by horses—the clearing, curing, and packing houses;
Deep in the forest, in the piney woods, turpentine and tar dropping from the incisions in the trees—There is the turpentine distillery,
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