diffuse float, and
     the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?

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?)

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 sweat 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.

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,