Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is beautiful as 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,
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems—for they are 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, eye-brows, 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, arm-pit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-balls, finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, back-bone, joints of the back-bone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel,
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body, or of any one’s body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman—and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving, and tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sun-burnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels, when feeling with the hand the naked meat of his own body or another person’s body,
The circling rivers, the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you, or within me—the bones, and the marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health,
O I think these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
O I think these are the soul!
If these are not the soul, what is the soul?

A nation announcing itself,
I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated,
I reject none, accept all, reproduce all in my own forms.

A breed whose testimony is behaviour,
What we are, we are—nativity is answer enough to objections;
We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded,
We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,
We are executive in ourselves—we are sufficient in the variety of ourselves,
We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in ourselves,
Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,
Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in ourselves.

Have you thought there could be but a single Supreme?
There can be any number of Supremes—one does not countervail another any more than one eye-sight countervails another, or one life countervails another.

All is eligible to all,
All is for individuals—all is for you,
No condition is prohibited, not God’s or any,
If one is lost, you are inevitably lost.

All comes by the body—only health puts you rapport with the universe.

Produce great persons, the rest follows.
How dare a sick man, or an obedient man, write poems?
Which is the theory or book that is not diseased?

Piety and conformity to them that like!
Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like!
I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, to leap from their seats and contend for their lives!

I am he who goes through the streets with a barbed tongue, questioning every one I meet—questioning you up there now,
Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before?
Who are you, that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?

Are you, or would you be, better than all that has ever been before?
If you would be better than all that has ever been before, come listen to me, and I will to you.

Fear grace! Fear delicatesse!
Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey-juice!
Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature!
Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men!

Ages, precedents, poems, have long been accumulating undirected materials,
America brings builders, and brings its own styles.

Mighty bards have done their work, and passed to other spheres,
One work forever remains, the work of surpassing all they have done.

America, curious toward foreign characters, stands sternly by its own,
Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound,
Sees itself promulger of men and women, initiates the true use of precedents,
Does not repel them or the past, or what they have produced under their forms, or amid other politics, or amid the idea of castes, or the old religions,
Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house,
Perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was fittest for its days, that its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches, and that he shall be fittest for his days.

Any period, one nation must lead,
One land must be the promise and reliance of the future.

These States are the amplest poem,
Here is not merely a nation, but a teeming nation of nations,
Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night,
Here is what moves in magnificent masses, carelessly faithful of particulars,
Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the soul loves,
Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul loves.

Race of races, and bards to corroborate!
Of them, standing among them, one lifts to the light his west-bred face,
To him the hereditary countenance bequeathed, both mother’s and father’s,
His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees,
Built of the common stock, having room for far and near,
Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land,
Attracting it body and soul to himself, hanging on its neck with incomparable love,
Plunging his semitic muscle into its merits and demerits,
Making its geography, cities, beginnings, events, glories, defections, diversities, vocal in him,
Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him,
Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes, Missouri, Columbia, Ohio, St. Lawrence, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him,
The blue breadth over the sea off Massachusetts and Maine, or over the Virginia and Maryland sea, or over inland Champlain, Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan, Superior, or over the Texan, Mexican, Cuban, Floridian seas, or over the seas off California and Oregon, not tallying the breadth of the waters below, more than the breadth of above and below is tallied in him,
If the Atlantic coast stretch, or the Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them north or south,
Spanning between them east and west, and touching whatever is between them,
Growths growing from him to offset the growth of pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust, chestnut, cypress, hickory, lime-tree, cotton-wood, tulip-tree, cactus, tamarind, orange, magnolia, persimmon,
Tangles as tangled in him as any cane-brake or swamp,
He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with transparent ice, and icicles hanging from the boughs,
Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savannah, upland, prairie,
Through him flights, songs, screams, answering those of the wild-pigeon, high-hold, orchard-oriole, coot, surf-duck, red-shouldered-hawk, fish-hawk, white-ibis, indian-hen, cat-owl, water-pheasant, qua-bird, pied-sheldrake, mocking-bird, buzzard, condor, night-heron, eagle;
His spirit surrounding his country’s spirit, unclosed to good and evil,
Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times,
Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines,
Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, the rapid stature and muscle,
The haughty defiance of the Year 1—war, peace, the formation of the Constitution,
The separate States, the simple, elastic scheme, the immigrants,
The Union, always swarming with blatherers, and always calm and impregnable,
The unsurveyed interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals, hunters, trappers;
Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the gestation of new States,
Congress convening every December, the members duly coming up from the uttermost parts;
Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers, especially the young men,
Responding their manners, speech, dress, friendships—the gait they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors,
The freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the copiousness and decision of their phrenology,
The picturesque looseness of their carriage, their deathless attachment to freedom, their fierceness when wronged,
The fluency of their speech, their delight in music, their curiosity, good-temper, open-handedness,
The prevailing ardor and enterprise, the large amativeness,
The perfect equality of the female with the male, the fluid movement of the population,
The superior marine, free commerce, fisheries, whaling, gold-digging,
Wharf-hemm’d cities, railroad and steamboat lines, intersecting all points,
Factories, mercantile life, labor-saving machinery, the north-east, north-west, south-west,
Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation life,
Slavery, the tremulous spreading of hands to shelter it—the stern opposition to it, which ceases only when it ceases.