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Home  »  Prose Works  »  145. Horse-Mint

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Prose Works. 1892.

I. Specimen Days

145. Horse-Mint

Aug. 22.—NOT a human being, and hardly the evidence of one, in sight. After my brief semi-daily bath, I sit here for a bit, the brook musically brawling, to the chromatic tones of a fretful cat-bird somewhere off in the bushes. On my walk hither two hours since, through fields and the old lane, I stopt to view, now the sky, now the mile-off woods on the hill, and now the apple orchards. What a contrast from New York’s or Philadelphia’s streets! Everywhere great patches of dingy-blossom’d horse-mint wafting a spicy odor through the air, (especially evenings.) Everywhere the flowering boneset, and the rose-bloom of the wild bean.