sand-swallows

Updated: May 22, 2025

And still the clear notes of the quail the quiver of leaf-shadows over the paper as I write the sky aloft, with white clouds, and the sun well declining to the west the swift darting of many sand-swallows coming and going, their holes in a neighboring marl-bank the odor of the cedar and oak, so palpable, as evening approaches perfume, color, the bronze-and-gold of nearly ripen'd wheat clover-fields, with honey-scent the well-up maize, with long and rustling leaves the great patches of thriving potatoes, dusky green, fleck'd all over with white blossoms the old, warty, venerable oak above me and ever, mix'd with the dual notes of the quail, the soughing of the wind through some near-by pines.

Walt Whitman - Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy