Leaves of Grass

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,

      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.

  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

      inter-penetrate 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 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 forever;

  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.

We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d

  We two, how long we were fool’d,

  Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,

  We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,

  We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,

  We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,

  We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,

  We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,

  We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,

  We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings

      and evenings,

  We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,

  We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,

  We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic

      and stellar, we are as two comets,

  We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,

  We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,

  We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling

      over each other and interwetting each other,

  We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,

  We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence

      of the globe,

  We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,

  We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.

O Hymen! O Hymenee!

  O hymen! O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus?

  O why sting me for a swift moment only?

  Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?

  Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you would

      soon certainly kill me?

I Am He That Aches with Love

  I am he that aches with amorous love;

  Does the earth gravitate? does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?

  So the body of me to all I meet or know.

Native Moments

  Native moments—when you come upon me—ah you are here now,

  Give me now libidinous joys only,

  Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank,

  To-day I go consort with Nature’s darlings, to-night too,

  I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight

      orgies of young men,

  I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers,

  The echoes ring with our indecent calls, I pick out some low person

      for my dearest friend,

  He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be one condemn’d by

      others for deeds done,

  I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from my companions?

  O you shunn’d persons, I at least do not shun you,

  I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet,

  I will be more to you than to any of the rest.

Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City

  Once I pass’d through a populous city imprinting my brain for future

      use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,

  Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met

      there who detain’d me for love of me,

  Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has long

      been forgotten by me,

  I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,

  Again we wander, we love, we separate again,

  Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,

  I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ

  I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I

      pass’d the church,

  Winds of autumn, as I walk’d the woods at dusk I heard your long-

      stretch’d sighs up above so mournful,

  I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the

      soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;

  Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of the

      wrists around my head,

  Heard the pulse of you when all was still ringing little bells last

      night under my ear.

Facing West from California’s Shores

  Facing west from California’s shores,

  Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,

  I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,

      the land of migrations, look afar,

  Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;

  For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,

  From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero,

  From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands,

  Long having wander’d since, round the earth having wander’d,

  Now I face home again, very pleas’d and joyous,

  (But where is what I started for so long ago?

  And why is it yet unfound?)

As Adam Early in the Morning

  As Adam early in the morning,

  Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep,

  Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,

  Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,

  Be not afraid of my body.

BOOK V. CALAMUS