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Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
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SPONTANEOUS ME.
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,
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The rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, the private
untrimm'd bank, the primitive apples, the pebble-stones,
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Beautiful dripping fragments, the negligent list of one after an-
other as I happen to call them to me or think of them,
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The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,) |
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me, |
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This poem drooping shy and unseen that I always carry, and that
all men carry,
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(Know once for all, avow'd on purpose, wherever are men like
me, are our lusty lurking masculine poems,)
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Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers,
and the climbing sap,
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Arms and hands of love, lips of love, phallic thumb of love, breasts
of love, bellies press'd and glued together with love,
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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,
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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;
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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,
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The smell of apples, aromas from crush'd sage-plant, mint, birch-
bark,
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The boy's longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me
what he was dreaming,
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The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl and falling still and content
to the ground,
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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,
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The sensitive, orbic, underlapp'd brothers, that only privileged
feelers may be intimate where they are,
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The curious roamer the hand roaming all over the body, the
bashful withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly
pause and edge themselves,
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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,
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The young man that wakes deep at night, the hot hand seeking to
repress what would master him,
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The mystic amorous night, the strange half-welcome pangs, visions,
sweats,
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The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling
fingers, the young man all color'd, red, ashamed, angry;
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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,
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The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen'd
long-round walnuts,
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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,
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The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of
maternity,
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The oath of procreation I have sworn, my Adamic and fresh
daughters,
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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,
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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. |
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