 | |
| |
| 1 |
| I sing the body electric, |
| The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, |
| They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, |
| And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul. |
| |
| 5 | Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? |
| And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead? |
| And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? |
| And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul? |
| |
| 2 |
| The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account, |
| 10 | That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect. |
| |
| The expression of the face balks account, |
| But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face, |
| It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists, |
| It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not |
| 15 | hide him, |
| The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth, |
| To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more, |
| You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side. |
| |
| The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, |
| 20 | their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards, |
| The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, |
| or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and from the heave of the water, |
| The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the horse-man in his saddle, |
| Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances, |
| 25 | The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives |
| waiting, |
| The female soothing a child, the farmer's daughter in the garden or cow-yard, |
| The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six horses through the crowd, |
| The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, |
| 30 | out on the vacant lot at sundown after work, |
| The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance, |
| The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes; |
| The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through |
| clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps, |
| 35 | The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the |
| listening on the alert, |
| The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv'd neck and the counting; |
| Such-like I love — I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother's breast with the little |
| child, |
| 40 | Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, |
| listen, count. |
| |
| 3 |
| I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons, |
| And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons. |
| |
| This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person, |
| 45 | The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, the immeasurable |
| meaning of his black eyes, the richness and breadth of his manners, |
| These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also, |
| He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were massive, clean, bearded, |
| tan-faced, handsome, |
| 50 | They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him, |
| They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love, |
| He drank water only, the blood show'd like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face, |
| He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail'd his boat himself, he had a fine one presented |
| to him by a ship-joiner, he had fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him, |
| 55 | When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out |
| as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang, |
| You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit by him in the boat that |
| you and he might touch each other. |
| |
| 4 |
| I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough, |
| 60 | To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, |
| To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, |
| To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for |
| a moment, what is this then? |
| I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea. |
| |
| 65 | There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact |
| and odor of them, that pleases the soul well, |
| All things please the soul, but these please the soul well. |
| |
| 5 |
| This is the female form, |
| A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot, |
| 70 | It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction, |
| I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but |
| myself and it, |
| Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or |
| fear'd of hell, are now consumed, |
| 75 | Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response likewise ungovernable, |
| Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused, mine too diffused, |
| 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, |
| 80 | 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. |
| |
| 85 | 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, |
| 90 | She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters. |
| |
| As I see my soul reflected in Nature, |
| As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness, sanity, beauty, |
| See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see. |
| |
| 6 |
| The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place, |
| 95 | He too is all qualities, he is action and power, |
| The flush of the known universe is in him, |
| Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well, |
| The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is utmost become him well, |
| pride is for him, |
| 100 | The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul, |
| Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to the test of himself, |
| Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes soundings at last only here, |
| (Where else does he strike soundings except here?) |
| |
| The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred, |
| 105 | No matter who it is, it is sacred — is it the meanest one in the laborers' gang? |
| Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf? |
| Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you, |
| Each has his or her place in the procession. |
| |
| (All is a procession, |
| 110 | The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.) |
| |
| Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant? |
| Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has no right to a sight? |
| Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and the soil is on the |
| surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts, |
| 115 | For you only, and not for him and her? |
| |
| 7 |
| A man's body at auction, |
| (For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,) |
| I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business. |
| |
| Gentlemen look on this wonder, |
| 120 | Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it, |
| For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant, |
| For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll'd. |
| |
| In this head the all-baffling brain, |
| In it and below it the makings of heroes. |
| |
| 125 | Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve, |
| They shall be stript that you may see them. |
| |
| Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition, |
| Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized arms and |
| legs, |
| 130 | And wonders within there yet. |
| |
| Within there runs blood, |
| The same old blood! the same red-running blood! |
| There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings, aspirations, |
| (Do you think they are not there because they are not express'd in parlors and |
| 135 | lecture-rooms?) |
| |
| This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers in their turns, |
| In him the start of populous states and rich republics, |
| Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments. |
| |
| How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring through the centuries? |
| 140 | (Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace back through the |
| centuries?) |
| |
| 8 |
| A woman's body at auction, |
| She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers, |
| She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers. |
| |
| 145 | Have you ever loved the body of a woman? |
| Have you ever loved the body of a man? |
| Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and times all over the |
| earth? |
| |
| If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred, |
| 150 | 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 more beautiful than the most |
| beautiful face. |
| |
| Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool that corrupted her own |
| live body? |
| 155 | For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves. |
| |
| 9 |
| 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, (and that they |
| are the soul,) |
| 160 | I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems, |
| Man's, woman's, child, 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, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids, |
| 165 | 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, |
| 170 | Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones, |
| Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails, |
| Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side, |
| Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone, |
| Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root, |
| 175 | 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, |
| 180 | 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, |
| 185 | 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, |
| 190 | The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair, |
| The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the 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, |
| 195 | The exquisite realization of health; |
| O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, |
| O I say now these are the soul! |
