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Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892

"Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy"



BIRDS AND BIRDS AND BIRDS
_A little later--bright weather_.--An unusual melodiousness, these
days, (last of April and first of May) from the blackbirds; indeed all
sorts of birds, darting, whistling, hopping or perch'd on trees. Never
before have I seen, heard, or been in the midst of, and got so flooded
and saturated with them and their performances, as this current month.
Such oceans, such successions of them. Let me make a list of those I
find here:
Black birds (plenty,) Meadow-larks (plenty,)
Ring doves, Cat-birds (plenty,)
Owls, Cuckoos,
Woodpeckers, Pond snipes (plenty,)
King-birds, Cheewinks,
Crows (plenty,) Quawks,
Wrens, Ground robins,
Kingfishers, Ravens,
Quails, Gray snipes,
Turkey-buzzards, Eagles,
Hen-hawks, High-holes,
Yellow birds, Herons,
Thrushes, Tits,
Reed birds, Woodpigeons.
Early came the
Blue birds, Meadow-lark,
Killdeer, White-bellied swallow,
Plover, Sandpiper,
Robin, Wilson's thrush,
Woodcock, Flicker.

FULL-STARR'D NIGHTS
_May 2l_.--Back in Camden. Again commencing one of those unusually
transparent, full-starr'd, blue-black nights, as if to show that
however lush and pompous the day may be, there is something left
in the not-day that can outvie it.


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