Leaves Of Grass: The First Edition of 1855 + The Death Bed Edition of 1892

by Walt Whitman

I do not press my fingers 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.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites, Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part...

If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it,

Translucent mould of me it shall be you!

Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you! Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you!

I hear the violoncello, (’tis the young man’s heart’s complaint,) I hear the key’d cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears, It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast. I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera, Ah this indeed is music — this suits me. A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me, The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full. I hear the train’d soprano (what work with hers is this?) The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies, It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess’d them, It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick’d by the indolent waves, I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath, Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death, At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles, And that we call Being.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars,

32

Perfect section.

33

Another great section.

Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess’d at, What I guess’d when I loaf’d on the grass, What I guess’d while I lay alone in my bed, And again as I walk’d the beach under the paling stars of the morning.

Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight?

List to the yarn, as my grandmother’s father the sailor told it to me.

Our frigate takes fire, The other asks if we demand quarter? If our colors are struck and the fighting done? Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain, We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting.

Could this be John Paul Jones?

Eleves, I salute you! come forward! Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.

Students.

To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean, On his right cheek I put the family kiss, And in my soul I swear I never will deny him. On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes. (This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.)

Does this relate to slavery? If so, the second verse is offensive.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

"I Contain Multitudes" is also a book about microbes by Ed Yong.

From Pent-Up Aching Rivers

From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus, Singing the song of procreation,

From sex, from the warp and from the woof,

From the long sustain’d kiss upon the mouth or bosom, From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk, fainting with excess,

I Sing the Body Electric

This is the female form,

A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot, It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,

Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching, Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious nice, Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn, Undulating into the willing and yielding day, Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

This the nucleus — after the child is born of woman, man is born of woman, This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the outlet again. Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest, You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul. The female contains all qualities and tempers them, She is in her place and moves with perfect balance, She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active, She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters.

Hop onto that pedestal!

7 A man’s body at auction,

Problematic.

8 A woman’s body at auction,

Also problematic.

A Woman Waits for Me

Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex, Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.

It is I, you women, I make my way,

do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,

I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for these States, I press with slow rude muscle, I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties, I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated within me.

Woman as receptacle.

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,

More

I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality, I plant so lovingly now.

Of the same.

Spontaneous Me

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;

Anthromorphic. Bees DON'T fuck flowers! And male bees don't work the fields.

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;

Masturbation, I guess?

The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked,

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,

Never heard that Walt Whitman had any children.

One Hour to Madness and Joy

O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me in defiance of the world! O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine! O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determin’d man.

O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all

Nice last two verses.

Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me, Whispering I love you, before long I die, I have travel’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you, For I could not die till I once look’d on you, For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.

Bathing myself, bathing my songs in Sex, Offspring of my loins.

Ick!

We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d

We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return, We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,

Etc. Beautiful poem.

O Hymen! O Hymenee!

Don't know what this poem means. Don't think it has anything to do with losing virginity.

Native Moments

All about cruising.