1
I celebrate myself,
and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good
belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my
blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease
not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
forgotten,
I harbor for good
or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
2
Houses and rooms are full of
perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself
and know
it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let
it.
The atmosphere is not a
perfume, it has no taste
of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I
am
in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and
naked,
I
am
mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread,
crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the
passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the
barn,
The sound of the belch'd words
of my voice loos'd to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs
wag,
The delight alone
or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling
of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckon'd a thousand
acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt
so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop
this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good
of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor
look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the
spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things
from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
< British and American Poets
of the 19th Century >