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.

1856 1871

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 babies 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.

1856 1867

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.)