Leaves of Grass

      him all day,

  The farm-boy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of my voice,

  In vessels that sail my words sail, I go with fishermen and seamen

      and love them.

  The soldier camp’d or upon the march is mine,

  On the night ere the pending battle many seek me, and I do not fail them,

  On that solemn night (it may be their last) those that know me seek me.

  My face rubs to the hunter’s face when he lies down alone in his blanket,

  The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon,

  The young mother and old mother comprehend me,

  The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are,

  They and all would resume what I have told them.

       48

  I have said that the soul is not more than the body,

  And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,

  And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,

  And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own

      funeral drest in his shroud,

  And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,

  And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the

      learning of all times,

  And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it

      may become a hero,

  And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe,

  And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed

      before a million universes.

  And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,

  For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,

  (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and

      about death.)

  I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,

  Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

  Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

  I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

  In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,

  I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d

      by God’s name,

  And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,

  Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

       49

  And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to

      try to alarm me.

  To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,

  I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting,

  I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors,

  And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape.

  And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not

      offend me,

  I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,

  I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish’d breasts of melons.

  And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,

  (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)

  I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven,

  O suns—O grass of graves—O perpetual transfers and promotions,

  If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?

  Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,

  Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,

  Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that decay

      in the muck,

  Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.

  I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,

  I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected,

  And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.

       50

  There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.

  Wrench’d and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes,

  I sleep—I sleep long.

  I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,

  It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

  Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,

  To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

  Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.

  Do you see O my brothers and sisters?

  It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal

      life—it is Happiness.

       51

  The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them.

  And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

  Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?

  Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,

  (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

  Do I contradict myself?

  Very well then I contradict myself,

  (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

  I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

  Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?

  Who wishes to walk with me?

  Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

       52

  The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab

      and my loitering.

  I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

  I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

  The last scud of day holds back for me,

  It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,

  It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

  I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

  I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

  I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

  If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

  You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

  But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

  And filter and fibre your blood.

  Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

  Missing me one place search another,

  I stop somewhere waiting for you.

BOOK IV. CHILDREN OF ADAM

To the Garden the World

  To the garden the world anew ascending,

  Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,

  The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,

  Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber,

  The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again,

  Amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous,

  My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for

      reasons, most wondrous,

  Existing I peer and penetrate still,

  Content with the present, content with the past,

  By my side or back of me Eve following,

  Or in front, and I following her just the same.

From Pent-Up Aching Rivers

  From pent-up aching rivers,

  From that of myself without which I were nothing,

  From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I stand sole

      among men,

  From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus,

  Singing the song of procreation,

  Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown people,

  Singing the muscular urge and the blending,

  Singing the bedfellow’s song, (O resistless yearning!

  O for any and each the body correlative attracting!

  O for you whoever you are your correlative body! O it, more than all

      else, you delighting!)

  From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day,

  From native moments, from bashful pains, singing them,

  Seeking something yet unfound though I have diligently sought it

      many a long year,

  Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random,

  Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals,

  Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing,

  Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds,

  Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves,

  Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting,

  The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating,

  The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body,

  The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his back

      lying and floating,

  The female form approaching, I pensive, love-flesh tremulous aching,

  The divine list for myself or you or for any one making,

  The face, the limbs, the index from head to foot, and what it arouses,

  The mystic deliria, the madness amorous, the utter abandonment,

  (Hark close and still what I now whisper to you,

  I love you, O you entirely possess me,

  O that you and I escape from the rest and go utterly off, free and lawless,

  Two hawks in the air, two fishes swimming in the sea not more

      lawless than we;)

  The furious storm through me careering, I passionately trembling.

  The oath of the inseparableness of two together, of the woman that

      loves me and whom I love more than my life, that oath swearing,

  (O I willingly stake all for you,

  O let me be lost if it must be so!

  O you and I! what is it to us what the rest do or think?

  What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and exhaust

      each other if it must be so;)

  From the master, the pilot I yield the vessel to,

  The general commanding me, commanding all, from him permission taking,

  From time the programme hastening, (I have loiter’d too long as it is,)

  From sex, from the warp and from the woof,

  From privacy, from frequent repinings alone,

  From plenty of persons near and yet the right person not near,

  From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers

      through my hair and beard,

  From the long sustain’d kiss upon the mouth or bosom,

  From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk, fainting

      with excess,

  From what the divine husband knows, from the work of fatherhood,

  From exultation, victory and relief, from the bedfellow’s embrace in

      the night,

  From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms,

  From the cling of the trembling arm,

  From the bending curve and the clinch,

  From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing,

  From the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as unwilling

      to leave,

  (Yet a moment O tender waiter, and I return,)

  From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews,

  From the night a moment I emerging flitting out,

  Celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for,

  And you stalwart loins.

I Sing the Body Electric

       1

  I sing the body electric,

  The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

  They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

  And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

  Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?

  And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?

  And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?

  And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

       2

  The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself

      balks account,

  That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

  The expression of the face balks account,

  But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,

  It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of

      his hips and wrists,

  It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist

      and knees, dress does not hide him,

  The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,

  To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,

  You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

  The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the

      folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the

      contour of their shape downwards,

  The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through

      the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls

      silently to and from the heave of the water,

  The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the

      horse-man in his saddle,

  Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,

  The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open

      dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,

  The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or

      cow-yard,

  The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six

      horses through the crowd,

  The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,

      good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work,

  The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,

  The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;

  The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine

      muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,

  The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes

      suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,

  The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d

      neck and the counting;

  Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s

      breast with the little child,

  Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with

      the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

       3

  I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,

  And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

  This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,

  The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and

      beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness

      and breadth of his manners,

  These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,

  He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were

      massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,

  They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,

  They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love,

  He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the

      clear-brown skin of his face,

  He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he

      had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had

      fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,

  When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,

      you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,

  You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit

      by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

       4

  I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,

  To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,

  To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,

  To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly

      round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?

  I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

  There is something in staying close to men and women and looking

      on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,

  All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

       5

  This is the female form,

  A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,

  It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,

  I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,

      all falls aside but myself and it,

  Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what

      was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,

  Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response

      likewise ungovernable,

  Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all

      diffused, mine too diffused,

  Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling

      and deliciously aching,

  Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of

      love, white-blow and delirious nice,

  Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,

  Undulating into the willing and yielding day,

  Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

  This the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, man is born of woman,

  This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the

      outlet again.

  Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the

      exit of the rest,

  You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

  The female contains all qualities and tempers them,

  She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,

  She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active,

  She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters.

  As I see my soul reflected in Nature,

  As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,

      sanity, beauty,

  See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

       6

  The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,

  He too is all qualities, he is action and power,

  The flush of the known universe is in him,

  Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,

  The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is

      utmost become him well, pride is for him,

  The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,

  Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to

      the test of himself,

  Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes

      soundings at last only here,

  (Where else does he strike soundings except here?)

  The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,

  No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the

      laborers’ gang?

  Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?

  Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as

      much as you,

  Each has his or her place in the procession.

  (All is a procession,

  The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

  Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?

  Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has

      no right to a sight?

  Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and

      the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,

  For you only, and not for him and her?

       7

  A man’s body at auction,

  (For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)

  I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.

  Gentlemen look on this wonder,

  Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,

  For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one

      animal or plant,

  For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.

  In this head the all-baffling brain,

  In it and below it the makings of heroes.

  Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in

      tendon and nerve,

  They shall be stript that you may see them.

  Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,

  Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby,

      good-sized arms and legs,

  And wonders within there yet.

  Within there runs blood,

  The same old blood! the same red-running blood!

  There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires,

      reachings, aspirations,

  (Do you think they are not there because they are not express’d in

      parlors and lecture-rooms?)

  This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be

      fathers in their turns,

  In him the start of populous states and rich republics,

  Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.

  How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring

      through the centuries?

  (Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace

      back through the centuries?)

       8

  A woman’s body at auction,

  She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,

  She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.

  Have you ever loved the body of a woman?

  Have you ever loved the body of a man?

  Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations

      and times all over the earth?

  If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,

  And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,

  And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more

      beautiful than the most beautiful face.

  Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool

      that corrupted her own live body?

  For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

       9

  O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and

      women, nor the likes of the parts of you,

  I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of

      the soul, (and that they are the soul,)

  I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and