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Walt Whitman
A WOMAN waits for me—she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were
lacking.
Sex contains all,
Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk;
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals,
All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth,
All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the earth,
These are contain’d in sex, as parts of itself, and justifications of itself.
Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex,
Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.
A golden eagle in the street
between Fetter Lane and Shoe Lane.
Six clerks sing to it about Creation.
form the envisioned end
grown by inner
suns and sprays
forged from seeing nerves
the naked wood or stone
resisting yielding to form
clay pressed turned into
carved wings blue flame birds
pecking our walls
to fire
the thought and blood
into a song
from someone like us
dreaming seeing
finding us
The lapidary care bestowed
By God in fashioning the toad;
The expert craftsmanship which He
Spent on the gnu's topography;
The thought which loosened from that Brow
The crab, the camel and the cow,
With equal lavishness He spent
On many a priest and president.
I who cut patterns,
As every soul must do,
Fret myself with longing
For themes that are new.
All these fashions
Were moulded years gone by,
And, like the mask of politics,
Are coloured with a lie.
Even the treasured love motif,
This thing of you and me,
It must so carefully be cut
To keep us bound, yet free.
And death, the sombre casket
Of centuries of song,
And war, and rivalries and creeds,
These we have used too long.
And Gwydion said to Math, when it was Spring:
"Come now and let us make a wife for Llew."
And so they broke broad boughs yet moist with dew,
And in a shadow made a magic ring:
They took the violet and the meadow-sweet
To form her pretty face, and for her feet
They built a mound of daisies on a wing,
And for her voice they made a linnet sing
In the wide poppy blowing for her mouth.
And over all they chanted twenty hours.
And Llew came singing from the azure south
And bore away his wife of birds and flowers.
I FEEL that your neglect has flayed my soul
And left it a sore, bleeding, pulsing whole!
I feel there is hot fire in pain,
To boil the iron-pot that is my brain!
All my experience, all my thoughts and dreams.
Bubble together, and the mixture steams;
In lovely shapes the bluey vapours rise.
Angels and kindly goddesses console my eyes.
Into the boiling pot I plunge my spoon.
And of hot misery receive my boon.
For from the viscid liquor make I shapes.
Fairies and goblins, little goats and apes.
Many-hued jewels, gem-like flowers.
Bright beads to count kind prayers and happy hours;
Once from the pot a crystal sphere I wrought,
It was a new, clear, and quite splendid thought.
Little Lamb, who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee;
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb
He is meek, and He is mild,
He became a little child.
UNFOLDED out of the folds of the woman, man comes unfolded, and is always to
come unfolded;
Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth, is to come the superbest
man of the earth;
Unfolded out of the friendliest woman, is to come the friendliest man;
Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman, can a man be form’d of
perfect body;
Unfolded only out of the inimitable poem of the woman, can come the poems of
man—(only thence have my poems come;)
Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thence can appear the
strong and arrogant man I love;
Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman I love, only thence come
the brawny embraces of the man;
I
THERE is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind,
Omnific. His most holy name is Love.
Truth of subliming import! with the which
Who feeds and saturates his constant soul,
He from his small particular orbit flies
With blest outstarting! From himself he flies,
Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze
Views all creation; and he loves it all,
And blesses it, and calls it very good!
This is indeed to dwell with the Most High!
Cherubs and rapture-trembling Seraphim
Can press no nearer to the Almighty’s throne.
But that we roam unconscious, or with hearts
Unfeeling of our universal Sire,
And that in His vast family no Cain
ALL that we see, about, abroad,
What is it all, but nature's God?
In meaner works discovered here
No less than in the starry sphere.
In seas, on earth, this God is seen;
All that exist, upon Him lean;
He lives in all, and never strayed
A moment from the works He made:
His system fixed on general laws
Bespeaks a wise creating cause;
Impartially He rules mankind
And all that on this globe we find.
Unchanged in all that seems to change,
Unbounded space is His great range;
To one vast purpose always true,
No time, with Him, is old or new.
(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.