Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,

We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,

We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,

We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,

We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,

We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,

We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings

and evenings,

We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,

We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,

We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic

and stellar, we are as two comets,

We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,

We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,

We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling

over each other and interwetting each other,

We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,

We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence

of the globe,

We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,

We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.

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O hymen! O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus?

O why sting me for a swift moment only?

Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?

Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you would

soon certainly kill me?

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I am he that aches with amorous love;

Does the earth gravitate? does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?

So the body of me to all I meet or know.

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Native moments — when you come upon me — ah you are here now,

Give me now libidinous joys only,

Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank,

To-day I go consort with Nature’s darlings, to-night too,

I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight

orgies of young men,

I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers,

The echoes ring with our indecent calls, I pick out some low person

for my dearest friend,

He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be one condemn’d by

others for deeds done,

I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from my companions?

O you shunn’d persons, I at least do not shun you,

I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet,

I will be more to you than to any of the rest.

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Once I pass’d through a populous city imprinting my brain for future

use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,

Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met

there who detain’d me for love of me,

Day by day and night by night we were together — all else has long

been forgotten by me,

I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,

Again we wander, we love, we separate again,

Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,

I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

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I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I

pass’d the church,

Winds of autumn, as I walk’d the woods at dusk I heard your long-

stretch’d sighs up above so mournful,

I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the

soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;

Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of the

wrists around my head,

Heard the pulse of you when all was still ringing little bells last

night under my ear.

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Facing west from California’s shores,

Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,

I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,

the land of migrations, look afar,

Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;

For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,

From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero,

From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands,

Long having wander’d since, round the earth having wander’d,

Now I face home again, very pleas’d and joyous,

(But where is what I started for so long ago?

And why is it yet unfound?)

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As Adam early in the morning,

Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep,

Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,

Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,

Be not afraid of my body.

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In paths untrodden,

In the growth by margins of pond-waters,

Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,

From all the standards hitherto publish’d, from the pleasures,

profits, conformities,

Which too long I was offering to feed my soul,

Clear to me now standards not yet publish’d, clear to me that my soul,

That the soul of the man I speak for rejoices in comrades,

Here by myself away from the clank of the world,

Tallying and talk’d to here by tongues aromatic,

No longer abash’d, (for in this secluded spot I can respond as I

would not dare elsewhere,)

Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains

all the rest,

Resolv’d to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment,

Projecting them along that substantial life,

Bequeathing hence types of athletic love,

Afternoon this delicious Ninth-month in my forty-first year,

I proceed for all who are or have been young men,

To tell the secret my nights and days,

To celebrate the need of comrades.

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Scented herbage of my breast,

Leaves from you I glean, I write, to be perused best afterwards,

Tomb-leaves, body-leaves growing up above me above death,

Perennial roots, tall leaves, O the winter shall not freeze you

delicate leaves,

Every year shall you bloom again, out from where you retired you

shall emerge again;

O I do not know whether many passing by will discover you or inhale

your faint odor, but I believe a few will;

O slender leaves! O blossoms of my blood! I permit you to tell in

your own way of the heart that is under you,

O I do not know what you mean there underneath yourselves, you are

not happiness,

You are often more bitter than I can bear, you burn and sting me,

Yet you are beautiful to me you faint tinged roots, you make me

think of death,

Death is beautiful from you, (what indeed is finally beautiful

except death and love?)

O I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of lovers,

I think it must be for death,

For how calm, how solemn it grows to ascend to the atmosphere of lovers,

Death or life I am then indifferent, my soul declines to prefer,

(I am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death most,)

Indeed O death, I think now these leaves mean precisely the same as

you mean,

Grow up taller sweet leaves that I may see! grow up out of my breast!