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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;

OI say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,

OI 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,

They are ultimate in their own right — they are calm, clear, wellpossess'd of themselves.

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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.

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 an other 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, birchbark,

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 babes 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.

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!

To escape utterly from others' anchors and holds !

To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous !
To court destruction with taunts, with invitations !

To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate soul !

To be lost if it must be so !

To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom' With one brief hour of madness and joy.

OUT OF THE ROLLING OCEAN THE CROWD.
OUT of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering I love you, before long I die,

I have travel'd a long way merely to look on you to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look'd on you,

For I fear'd I might afterward lose you.

Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe,

Return in peace to the ocean my love,

I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated,

Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!

But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,

As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse for

ever ;

Be not impatient a little space — know you I salute the air, the ocean and the land,

Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love.

AGES AND AGES RETURNING AT INTERVALS.

AGES and ages returning at intervals,

Undestroy'd, wandering immortal,

Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet,
I, chanter of Adamic songs,

Through the new garden the West, the great cities calling,

Deliriate, thus prelude what is generated, offering these, offering

myself,

Bathing myself, bathing my songs in Sex,

Offspring of my loins.

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