Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

111 I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

112 I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only development.

113 Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President?
It is a trifle—they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.

114 I am He that walks with the tender and growing Night,
I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the Night.

115 Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing Night!
Night of south winds! Night of the large few stars!
Still, nodding night! Mad, naked, summer night.

116 Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breathed Earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains, misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbowed Earth! Rich, apple-blossomed Earth!
Smile, for Your Lover comes!

117 Prodigal, you have given me love! Therefore I to you give love!
O unspeakable passionate love!

118 Thruster holding me tight, and that I hold tight!
We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.

119 You Sea! I resign myself to you also—I guess what you mean,
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me;
We must have a turn together—I undress—hurry me out of sight of the land,
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse,
Dash me with amorous wet—I can repay you.

120 Sea of stretched ground-swells!
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!
Sea of the brine of life! Sea of unshovelled and always-ready graves!
Howler and scooper of storms! Capricious and dainty Sea!
I am integral with you—I too am of one phase, and of all phases.

121 Partaker of influx and efflux—extoller of hate and conciliation,
Extoller of amies, and those that sleep in each others’ arms.

122 I am he attesting sympathy,
Shall I make my list of things in the house, and skip the house that supports them?

123 I am the poet of common sense, and of the demonstrable, and of immortality,
And am not the poet of goodness only—I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.

124 Washes and razors for foofoos—for me freckles and a bristling beard.

125 What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?
Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me—I stand indifferent,
My gait is no fault-finder’s or rejecter’s gait,
I moisten the roots of all that has grown.

126 Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?
Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be worked over and rectified?

127 I step up to say that what we do is right, and what we affirm is right—and some is only the ore of right,
Witnesses of us—one side a balance, and the antipodal side a balance,
Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,
Thoughts and deeds of the present, our rouse and early start.

128 This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,
There is no better than it and now.

129 What behaved well in the past, or behaves well to-day, is not such a wonder,
The wonder is, always and always, how can there be a mean man or an infidel.

130 Endless unfolding of words of ages!
And mine a word of the modern—a word en-masse.

131 A word of the faith that never balks,
One time as good as another time—here or henceforward, it is all the same to me.

132 A word of reality—materialism first and last imbuing.

133 Hurrah for positive Science! long live exact demonstration!
Fetch stonecrop, mixt with cedar and branches of lilac,
This is the lexicographer—this the chemist—this made a grammar of the old cartouches,
These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,
This is the geologist—this works with the scalpel—and this is a mathematician.

134 Gentlemen! I receive you, and attach and clasp hands with you,
The facts are useful and real—they are not my dwelling—I enter by them to an area of the dwelling.

135 I am less the reminder of property or qualities, and more the reminder of life,
And go on the square for my own sake and for others’ sakes,
And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipped,
And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives, and them that plot and conspire.

136 Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,
Disorderly, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking, breeding,
No sentimentalist—no stander above men and women, or apart from them,
No more modest than immodest.

137 Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

138 Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me,
And whatever I do or say, I also return.

139 Through me the afflatus surging and surging—through me the current and index.

140 I speak the pass-word primeval—I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.

141 Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves,
Voices of prostitutes, and of deformed persons,
Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars—and of wombs, and of the fatherstuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.

142 Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts—voices veiled, and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent, by me clarified and transfigured.

143 I do not press my finger across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.

144 I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

145 Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from,
The scent of these arm-pits, aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

146 If I worship any particular thing, it shall be some of the spread of my own body.

147 Translucent mould of me, it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests, it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter, it shall be you.