26 August 1850 – 1 September 1850

Among the signs of autumn I perceive The Roman wormwood (called by learned men Ambrosia elatior, food for gods, For by impartial science the humblest weed Is as well named as is the proudest flower) Sprinkles its yellow dust over my shoes As I brush through the now neglected garden. We trample under foot the food of gods And spill their nectar in each drop of dew. My honest shoes, fast friends that never stray Far from my couch, thus powdered, countrified, Bearing many a mile the marks of their adventure, At the post-house disgrace the Gallic gloss Of those well-dressed ones who no morning dew Nor Roman wormwood ever have gone through, Who never walk, but are transported rather, For what old crime of theirs I do not gather. The gray blueberry bushes, venerable as oaks,—why is not their fruit poisonous? Bilberry called Vaccinium corymbosum; some say amœnum, or blue bilberry, and Vaccinium disomorphum Mx., black bilberry. Its fruit hangs on into September, but loses its wild and sprightly taste. Th’ ambrosia of the Gods’s a weed on earth, Their nectar is the morning dew which on- Ly our shoes taste, for they are simple folks. ’T is very fit the ambrosia of the gods Should be a weed on earth, as nectar is The morning dew which our shoes brush aside; For the gods are simple folks, and we should pine upon their humble fare. The purple flowers of the humble trichostema mingled with the wormwood, smelling like it; and the spring-scented, dandelion-scented primrose, yellow primrose. The swamp-pink (Azalea viscosa), its now withered pistils standing out. The odoriferous sassafras, with its delicate green stem, its three-lobed leaf, tempting the traveller to bruise it, it sheds so rare a perfume on him, equal to all the spices of the East. Then its rare-tasting root bark, like nothing else, which I used to dig. The first navigators freighted their ships with it and deemed it worth its weight in gold. The alder-leaved clethra (Clethra alnifolia), sweet-smelling queen of the swamp; its long white racemes. We are most apt to remember and cherish the flowers which appear earliest in the spring. I look with equal affection on those which are the latest to bloom in the fall. The choke-berry (Pyrus arbutifolia). The beautiful white waxen berries of the cornel, either Cornus alba or paniculata, white-berried or panicled, beautiful both when full of fruit and when its cymes are naked; delicate red cymes or stems of berries; spreading its little fairy fingers to the skies, its little palms; fairy palms they might be called. One of the viburnums, Lentago or pyrifolium or nudum, with its poisonous-looking fruit in cymes, first greenish-white, then red, then purple, or all at once. The imp-eyed, red, velvety-looking berry of the swamps. The spotted polygonum (Polygonum Persicaria), seen in low lands amid the potatoes now, wild prince’s-feather (?), slight flower that does not forget to grace the autumn. The late whortleberry—dangleberry—that ripens now that other huckleberries and blueberries are shrivelled and spoiling, September 1st; dangle down two or three inches; can rarely find many. They have a more transparent look, large, blue, long-stemmed, dangling, fruit of the swamp concealed. I detect the pennyroyal which my feet have bruised. Butter-and-eggs still hold out to bloom.