Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

  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.18

  —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

  that they are my poems,

  Man‘s, woman’s, child‘s, youth’s, wife‘s, husband’s, mother‘s,

  father’s, young man‘s, young woman’s poems,

  Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,

  Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or

  sleeping of the lids,

  Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw

  hinges,

  Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,

  Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck,

  neck-slue,

  Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the

  ample side-round of the chest,

  Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm

  bones,

  Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,

  finger-joints, finger-nails,

  Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone,

  breast-side,

  Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,

  Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round,

  man-balls, man-root,

  Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,

  Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,

  Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;

  All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your

  body or of any one’s body, male or female,

  The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and

  clean,

  The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,

  Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,

  Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes

  from woman,

  The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter,

  weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,

  Th
e voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,

  Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,

  Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and

  tightening,

  The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the

  eyes,

  The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,

  The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the

  naked meat of the body,

  The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,

  The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence

  downward toward the knees,

  The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the

  marrow in the bones,

  The exquisite realization of health;

  O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of

  the soul,

  O I say now these are the soul!

  A WOMAN WAITS FOR ME

  A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking,

  Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the

  right man were lacking.

  Sex contains all, bodies, souls,

  Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,

  Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the

  seminal milk,

  All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves,

  beauties, delights of the earth,

  All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the earth,

  These are contain’d in sex as parts of itself and justifications of itself.

  Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness

  of his sex,

  Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.

  Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,

  I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women

  that are warm-blooded and sufficient for me,

  I see that they understand me and do not deny me,

  I see that they are worthy of me, I will be the robust husband of

  those women.

  They are not one jot less than I am,

  They are tann’d in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,

  Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,

  They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,

  retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,19

  They are ultimate in their own right—they are calm, clear, well-

  possess’d of themselves.

  I draw you close to me, you women,

  I cannot let you go, I would do you good,

  I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but

  for others’ sakes,

  Envelop’d in you sleep greater heroes and bards,

  They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.

  It is I, you women, I make my way,

  I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but I love you,

  I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,

  I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for these States,

  I press with slow rude muscle,

  I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties,

  I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated

  within me.20

  Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,

  In you I wrap a thousand onward years,

  On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,

  The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls,

  new artists, musicians, and singers,

  The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,

  I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,

  I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you

  interpenetrate now,

  I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I

  count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,

  I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death,

  immortality, I plant so lovingly now.

  SPONTANEOUS ME

  Spontaneous me, Nature,

  The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,

  The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,

  The hillside whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash,

  The same late in autumn, the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple,

  and light and dark green,

  The rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, the private

  untrimm’d 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 always carry, and that

  all men carry,

  (Know once for all, avow’d on purpose, wherever are men like

  me, are our lusty lurking masculine 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 press’d 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 till he is satisfied;

  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 crush’d 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-form’d stings that sights, people, objects, sting me

  with,

  The hubb’d sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can

  any one,

  The sensitive, orbic, underlapp’d 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 vex’d 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 man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman

  that flushes and flushes,

  The young man that wakes deep at night, the hot hand seeking to

  repress what would master him,

  The mystic amorous night, the strange half-welcome pangs,

  visions, sweats,

  The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling

  fingers, the young man all color‘d, red, ashamed, angry;

  The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and

  naked,

  The merriment of the twin b
abes that crawl over the grass in

  the sun, the mother never turning her vigilant eyes from

  them,

  The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen’d

  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, my Adamic and fresh

  daughters,

  The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I

  saturate what shall produce boys to fill my place when I am

  through,

  The wholesome relief, repose, content,

  And this bunch pluck’d at random from myself,

  It has done its work—I toss it carelessly to fall where it may.21

  ONE HOUR TO MADNESS AND JOY

  One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!

  (What is this that frees me so in storms?

  What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)

  O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!

  O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my

  children,

  I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)

  O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to

  me in defiance of the world!

  O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!

  O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of

  a determin’d man.

  O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all

  untied and illumin‘d!

  O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!

  To be absolv’d from previous ties and conventions, I from mine

  and you from yours!

  To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of

  Nature!

  To have the gag remov’d from one’s mouth!

  To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.

  O something unprov‘d! something in a trance!