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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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WITH HUSKY-HAUGHTY LIPS, O SEA!
With husky-haughty lips, O sea! |
Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, |
Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, |
(I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,) |
Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, |
Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the
sun,
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Thy brooding scowl and murk—thy unloos'd hurricanes, |
Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; |
Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears—a lack from all
eternity in thy content,
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(Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make
thee greatest—no less could make thee,)
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Thy lonely state—something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, yet
never gain'st,
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Surely some right withheld—some voice, in huge monotonous
rage, of freedom-lover pent,
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Some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and chafing in those
breakers,
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By lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and panting breath, |
And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves, |
And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter, |
And undertones of distant lion roar, |
(Sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear—but now, rapport for
once,
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A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,) |
The first and last confession of the globe, |
Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's abysms, |
The tale of cosmic elemental passion, |
Thou tellest to a kindred soul. |
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