University of Virginia Library

SPONTANEOUS me, Nature,
The loving day, the friend I am happy with,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
The hill-side whitened with blossoms of the mountain
     ash,
The same, late in autumn—the gorgeous hues of red,
     yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green,

The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and birds—
     the private untrimmed bank—the primitive apples
     —the pebble-stones,
Beautiful dripping fragments—the negligent list of
     one after another, as I happen to call them to me,
     or think of them,
The real poems, (what we call poems being merely
     pictures,)
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men
     like me,
This poem, dropping shy and unseen, that I always
     carry, and that all men carry,
(Know, once for all, avowed on purpose, wherever are
     men like me, are our lusty, lurking, masculine,
     poems,)
Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-
     climbers, and the climbing sap,
Arms and hands of love—lips of love—phallic thumb
     of love—breasts of love—bellies pressed and
     glued together with love,
Earth of chaste love—life that is only life after
     love,
The body of my love—the body of the woman I
     love—the body of the man—the body of the
     earth,
Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,
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 upon her till he is satisfied,
The wet of woods through the early hours,
Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep,
     one with an arm slanting down across and below
     the waist of the other,
The smell of apples, aromas from crushed sage-plant,
     mint, birch-bark,
The boy's longings, the glow and pressure as he con-
     fides to me what he was dreaming,
The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl, and falling still
     and content to the ground,
The no-formed stings that sights, people, objects, sting
     me with,
The hubbed sting of myself, stinging me as much as it
     ever can any one,
The sensitive, orbic, underlapped brothers, that only
     privileged feelers may be intimate where they
     are,
The curious roamer, the hand, roaming all over the
     body—the bashful withdrawing of flesh where
     the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves,
The limpid liquid within the young man,
The vexed corrosion, so pensive and so painful,
The torment—the irritable tide that will not be at
     rest,
The like of the same I feel—the like of the same in
     others,
The young woman that flushes and flushes, and the
     young man that flushes and flushes,
The young man that wakes, deep at night, the hot
     hand seeking to repress what would master him
     the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats,
The pulse pounding through palms and trembling
     encircling fingers—the young man all colored,
     red, ashamed, angry;
The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing
     and naked,
The merriment of the twin-babes that crawl over the
     grass in the sun, the mother never turning her
     vigilant eyes from them,
The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening
     or ripened long-round walnuts,
The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,
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,
The wholesome relief, repose, content,
And this bunch plucked at random from myself,
It has done its work—I toss it carelessly to fall
     where it may.