Leaves of Grass (1856)
|
| THE friend I am happy with, |
| The arm of my friend hanging idly over my
shoulder, |
| The hill-side whitened with blossoms of the
mountain ash, |
| The same, late in autumn—the gorgeous hues of
red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green, |
| The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and
birds—the private untrimmed bank—the primitive apples—the pebble-stones, |
| Beautiful dripping fragments—the negligent list
of one after another, as I happen to call them to me, or think of them, |
| The real poems, (what we call poems being merely
pictures,) |
| The poems of the privacy of the night, and of
men like me, |
| This poem, drooping shy and unseen, that I al-
ways carry, and that all men carry, |
| (Know, once for all, avowed on purpose, wherever
are men like me, are our lusty, lurking, mas- culine poems,) |
)
|
| Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding,
love-climbers, and the climbing sap, |
| Arms and hands of love—lips of love—phallic
thumb of love—breasts of love—bellies, pressed and glued together with love, |
| Earth of chaste love—life that is only life after
love, |
| The body of my love—the body of the woman I
love—the body of the man—the body of the earth, |
| Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west, |
| The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up
and down—that gripes the full-grown lady- flower, curves upon her with amorous firm legs, takes his will of her, and holds himself tremulous and tight upon her till he is satis- fied, |
| The wet of woods through the early hours, |
| Two sleepers at night lying close together as they
sleep, one with an arm slanting down across and below the waist of the other, |
| The smell of apples, aromas from crushed sage-
plant, mint, birch-bark, |
| The boy's longings, the glow and pressure as he
confides to me what he was dreaming, |
| The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl, and falling
still and content to the ground, |
| The no-formed stings that sights, people, objects,
sting me with, |
)
|
| The hubbed sting of myself, stinging me as much
as it ever can any one, |
| The sensitive, orbic, underlapped brothers, that
only privileged feelers may be intimate where they are, |
| The curious roamer, the hand, roaming all over
the body—the bashful withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves, |
| The limpid liquid within the young man, |
| The vexed corrosion, so pensive and so painful, |
| The torment—the irritable tide that will not be
at rest, |
| The like of the same I feel—the like of the same
in others, |
| The young woman that flushes and flushes, and
the young man that flushes and flushes, |
| The young man that wakes, deep at night, the hot
hand seeking to repress what would master him—the strange half-welcome pangs, vis- ions, sweats—the pulse pounding through palms and trembling encirling fingers—the young man all colored, red, ashamed, angry; |
| The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie
willing and naked, |
| The merriment of the twin-babes that crawl over
the grass in the sun, the mother never turn- ing her vigilant eyes from them, |
)
|
| The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripen-
ing or ripened long-round walnuts, |
| The continence of vegetables, birds, animals, |
| The consequent meanness of me should I skulk
or find myself indecent, while birds and animals never once skulk or find themselves indecent, |
| The great chastity of paternity, to match the great
chastity of maternity, |
| The oath of procreation I have sworn, |
| The greed that eats in me day and night with
hungry gnaw, till I saturate what shall pro- duce boys to fill my place when I am through, |
| The wholesome relief, repose, content, |
| And this bunch plucked at random from myself, |
| It has done its work—I toss it carelessly to fall
where it may. |
)
|