Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

  The sweatings and fevers stop .. the throat that was unsound is

  sound .. the lungs of the consumptive are resumed .. the

  poor distressed head is free,

  The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and

  smoother than ever,

  Stiflings and passages open .... the paralysed become supple,

  The swelled and convulsed and congested awake to themselves in

  condition,

  They pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the

  night and awake.

  I too pass from the night;

  I stay awhile away 0 night, but I return to you again and love you;

  Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?

  I am not afraid .... I have been well brought forward by you;

  I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay

  so long:

  I know not how I came of you, and I know not where I go with

  you .... but I know I came well and shall go well.

  I will stop only a time with the night .... and rise betimes.

  I will duly pass the day 0 my mother and duly return to you;39

  Not you will yield forth the dawn again more surely than you will

  yield forth me again,

  Not the womb yields the babe in its time more surely than I shall

  be yielded from you in my time.

  [I Sing the Body Electric]

  THE bodies of men and women engirth me, and I engirth

  them,

  They will not let me off nor I them till I go with them and

  respond to them and love them.

  Was it dreamed whether those who corrupted their own live

  bodies could conceal themselves?

  And whether those who defiled the living were as bad as they who

  defiled the dead?40

  The expression of the body of man or woman balks account,

  The male is perfect and that of the female is perfect.

  The expression of a wellmade 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 supple quality he has strikes through the cotton

  and flannel;

  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

  shoulderside.

  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 swimmingbath .. seen as he swims

  through the salt transparent greenshine, or lies on his back

  and rolls silently with the heave of the water;

  Framers bare-armed framing a house .. hoisting the beams in

  their places .. or using the mallet and mortising-chisel,

  The bending forward and backward of rowers in rowboats .... the

  horseman in his saddle;

  Girls and mothers and housekeepers in all their exquisite offices,

  The group of laborers seated at noontime with their open dinner

  kettles, and their wives waiting,

  The female soothing a child .... the farmer’s daughter in the

  garden or cowyard,

  The woodman rapidly swinging his axe in the woods .... the

  young fellow hoeing corn .... the sleighdriver guiding his six

  horses through the crowd,

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

  lusty, goodnatured, nativeborn, out on the vacant lot at

  sundown after work,

  The coats vests and caps thrown down .. the embrace of love and

  resistance,

  The upperhold and underhold—the hair rumpled over and

  blinding the eyes;

  The march of firemen in their own costumes—the play of the

  masculine muscle through cleansetting trowsers and

  waistbands,

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

  suddenly again—the listening on the alert,

  The natural perfect and varied attitudes .... the bent head, the

  curved neck, the counting:

  Suchlike I love .... I loosen myself and pass freely .... and am

  at the mother’s breast with the little child,

  And swim with the swimmer, and wrestle with wrestlers, and march

  in line with the firemen, and pause and listen and count.

  I knew a man .... he was a common farmer .... he was the father of five sons .... and in them were the fathers of sons .... and in them were the fathers of sons.

  This man was a wonderful vigor and calmness and beauty of

  person;

  The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his

  manners, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard,

  the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes,

  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 tanfaced and 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 showed like scarlet through

  the clear brown skin of his face;

  He was a frequent gunner and fisher ... he sailed his boat

  himself ... he had a fine one presented to him by a

  shipjoiner .... he had fowling pieces, presented to him by

  men that loved him;

  When he went with his five sons and many grandsons 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.

  I have perceived 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 .. to touch any one .... to 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.

  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 .. the

  atmosphere and the fringed clouds .. what was expected of

  heaven or feared 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 .... loveflesh

  swelling and deliciously aching,

  Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormou
s .... quivering

  jelly of love .... white-blow and delirious juice,

  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 sweetfleshed day.

  This is the nucleus ... after the child is born of woman the man

  is born of woman,

  This is the bath of birth ... this is the merge of small and large

  and the outlet again.

  Be not ashamed women .. your privilege encloses the rest.. it 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 .... she moves with perfect balance,

  She is all things duly veiled .... 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 and beauty .... see the

  bent head and arms folded over the breast .... the female

  I see,

  I see the bearer of the great fruit which is immortality .... the

  good thereof is not tasted by roues, and never can be.

  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 fiercest largest passions .. bliss that is utmost and sorrow that

  is utmost become him well .... pride is for him,

  The fullspread pride of man is calming and excellent to the

  soul;

  Knowledge becomes him .... he likes it always .... he brings

  everything 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 .... it

  is no matter who,

  Is it a slave? Is it one of the dullfaced immigrants just landed on

  the wharf?

  Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the welloff ....

  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 beautiful motion.

  Do you know so much that you call the slave or the dullfaced

  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 diffused

  float, and the soil is on the surface and water runs

  and vegetation sprouts for you ... and not for him

  and her?

  A slave at auction!

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

  Gentlemen look on this curious creature,

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

  him,

  For him the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one

  animal or plant,

  For him the revolving cycles truly and steadily rolled.

  In that head the allbaffling brain,

  In it and below it the making of the attributes of heroes.

  Examine these limbs, red black or white .... they are very cunning

  in tendon and nerve;

  They shall be stript that you may see them.

  Exquisite senses, lifelit eyes, pluck, volition,

  Flakes of breastmuscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not

  flabby, goodsized arms and legs,

  And wonders within there yet.

  Within there runs his blood .... the same old blood .. the same

  red running blood;

  There swells and jets his heart .... There all passions and

  desires .. all reachings and aspirations:

  Do you think they are not there because they are not expressed in

  parlors and lecture-rooms?

  This is not only one man .... he is 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?

  A woman 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.

  Her daughters or their daughters’ daughters .. who knows who

  shall mate with them?

  Who knows through the centuries what heroes may come from

  them?

  In them and of them natal love .... in them the divine mystery .... the same old beautiful mystery.

  Have you ever loved a woman?

  Your mother .... is she living? .... Have you been much with

  her? and has she been much with you?

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

  and times all over the earth?

  If life and the soul are 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 firmfibred body is beautiful

  as 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.

  Who degrades or defiles the living human body is cursed,

  Who degrades or defiles the body of the dead is not more

  cursed.

  [Faces]

  SAUNTERING the pavement or riding the country byroads here

  then are faces,

  Faces of friendship, precision, caution, sauvity, ideality,

  The spiritual prescient face, the always welcome common

  benevolent face,

  The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural

  lawyers and judges broad at the backtop,

  The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows .... the

  shaved blanched faces of orthodox citizens,

  The pure extravagant yearning questioning artist’s face,

  The welcome ugly face of some beautiful soul .... the handsome

  detested or despised face,

  The sacred faces of infants .... the illuminated face of the

  mother of many children,

  The face of an amour .... the face of veneration,

  The face as of a dream .... the face of an immobile rock,

  The face withdrawn of its good and bad .. a castrated

  face,

  A wild hawk .. his wings clipped by the clipper,

  A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the

  gelder.

  Sauntering the pavement or crossing the ceaseless ferry, here then

  are faces;

  I see them and complain not and am content with all.

  Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them

  their own finale?

  This now is too lamentable a face for a man;

  Some abject
louse asking leave to be .. cringing for it,

  Some milknosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.

  This face is a dog’s snout sniffing for garbage;

  Snakes nest in that mouth .. I hear the sibilant threat.

  This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,

  Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.

  This is a face of bitter herbs .... this an emetic .... they need no

  label,

  And more of the drugshelf .. laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog’s

  lard.41

  This face is an epilepsy advertising and doing business .... its

  wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry,

  Its veins down the neck distend .... its eyes roll till they show

  nothing but their whites,

  Its teeth grit .. the palms of the hands are cut by the turned-in

  nails,

  The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he

  speculates well.

  This face is bitten by vermin and worms,

  And this is some murderer’s knife with a halfpulled scabbard.

  This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,

  An unceasing deathbell tolls there.

  Those are really men! .... the bosses and tufts of the great round

  globe!

  Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creased and

  cadaverous march?

  Well then you cannot trick me.

  I see your rounded never-erased flow,

  I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.

  Splay and twist as you like .... poke with the tangling fores of

  fishes or rats,

  You’ll be unmuzzled .... you certainly will.

  I saw the face of the most smeared and slobbering idiot they had

  at the asylum,

  And I knew for my consolation what they knew not;

  I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,42

  The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement;

  And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,

  And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharmed, every