by Walt Whitman
The sweatings and fevers stop .. the throat that was unsound is
sound .. the lungs of the consumptive are resumed .. the
poor distressed head is free,
The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and
smoother than ever,
Stiflings and passages open .... the paralysed become supple,
The swelled and convulsed and congested awake to themselves in
condition,
They pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the
night and awake.
I too pass from the night;
I stay awhile away 0 night, but I return to you again and love you;
Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?
I am not afraid .... I have been well brought forward by you;
I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay
so long:
I know not how I came of you, and I know not where I go with
you .... but I know I came well and shall go well.
I will stop only a time with the night .... and rise betimes.
I will duly pass the day 0 my mother and duly return to you;39
Not you will yield forth the dawn again more surely than you will
yield forth me again,
Not the womb yields the babe in its time more surely than I shall
be yielded from you in my time.
[I Sing the Body Electric]
THE bodies of men and women engirth me, and I engirth
them,
They will not let me off nor I them till I go with them and
respond to them and love them.
Was it dreamed whether those who corrupted their own live
bodies could conceal themselves?
And whether those who defiled the living were as bad as they who
defiled the dead?40
The expression of the body of man or woman balks account,
The male is perfect and that of the female is perfect.
The expression of a wellmade 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 hide him,
The strong sweet supple quality he has strikes through the cotton
and flannel;
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
shoulderside.
The sprawl and fulness of babes .... the bosoms and heads of
women .... the folds of their dress .... their style as we pass
in the street .... the contour of their shape downwards;
The swimmer naked in the swimmingbath .. seen as he swims
through the salt transparent greenshine, or lies on his back
and rolls silently with the heave of the water;
Framers bare-armed framing a house .. hoisting the beams in
their places .. or using the mallet and mortising-chisel,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in rowboats .... the
horseman in his saddle;
Girls and mothers and housekeepers in all their exquisite offices,
The group of laborers seated at noontime with their open dinner
kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child .... the farmer’s daughter in the
garden or cowyard,
The woodman rapidly swinging his axe in the woods .... the
young fellow hoeing corn .... the sleighdriver guiding his six
horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers .... two apprentice-boys, quite grown,
lusty, goodnatured, nativeborn, out on the vacant lot at
sundown after work,
The coats vests and caps thrown down .. the embrace of love and
resistance,
The upperhold and underhold—the hair rumpled over and
blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes—the play of the
masculine muscle through cleansetting trowsers and
waistbands,
The slow return from the fire .... the pause when the bell strikes
suddenly again—the listening on the alert,
The natural perfect and varied attitudes .... the bent head, the
curved neck, the counting:
Suchlike I love .... I loosen myself and pass freely .... and am
at the mother’s breast with the little child,
And swim with the swimmer, and wrestle with wrestlers, and march
in line with the firemen, and pause and listen and count.
I knew a man .... he was a common farmer .... he was the father of five sons .... and in them were the fathers of sons .... and in them were the fathers of sons.
This man was a wonderful vigor and calmness and beauty of
person;
The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his
manners, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard,
the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes,
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 tanfaced and handsome,
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 showed like scarlet through
the clear brown skin of his face;
He was a frequent gunner and fisher ... he sailed his boat
himself ... he had a fine one presented to him by a
shipjoiner .... he had fowling pieces, presented to him by
men that loved him;
When he went with his five sons and many grandsons 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.
I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,
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 .. to touch any one .... to 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.
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.
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
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 .. the
atmosphere and the fringed clouds .. what was expected of
heaven or feared of hell are now consumed,
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 .... loveflesh
swelling and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormou
s .... quivering
jelly of love .... white-blow and delirious juice,
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 sweetfleshed day.
This is the nucleus ... after the child is born of woman the man
is born of woman,
This is the bath of birth ... this is the merge of small and large
and the outlet again.
Be not ashamed women .. your privilege encloses the rest.. it 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 .... she moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veiled .... she is both passive and
active .... 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 and beauty .... see the
bent head and arms folded over the breast .... the female
I see,
I see the bearer of the great fruit which is immortality .... the
good thereof is not tasted by roues, and never can be.
The male is not less the soul, nor more .... he too is in his place,
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 fiercest largest passions .. bliss that is utmost and sorrow that
is utmost become him well .... pride is for him,
The fullspread pride of man is calming and excellent to the
soul;
Knowledge becomes him .... he likes it always .... he brings
everything 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 .... it
is no matter who,
Is it a slave? Is it one of the dullfaced immigrants just landed on
the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the welloff ....
just as much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.
All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and beautiful motion.
Do you know so much that you call the slave or the dullfaced
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 diffused
float, and the soil is on the surface and water runs
and vegetation sprouts for you ... and not for him
and her?
A slave at auction!
I help the auctioneer .... the sloven does not half know his business.
Gentlemen look on this curious creature,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for
him,
For him the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one
animal or plant,
For him the revolving cycles truly and steadily rolled.
In that head the allbaffling brain,
In it and below it the making of the attributes of heroes.
Examine these limbs, red black or white .... they are very cunning
in tendon and nerve;
They shall be stript that you may see them.
Exquisite senses, lifelit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breastmuscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not
flabby, goodsized arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.
Within there runs his blood .... the same old blood .. the same
red running blood;
There swells and jets his heart .... There all passions and
desires .. all reachings and aspirations:
Do you think they are not there because they are not expressed in
parlors and lecture-rooms?
This is not only one man .... he is 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?
Who might you find you have come from yourself if you could
trace back through the centuries?
A woman 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.
Her daughters or their daughters’ daughters .. who knows who
shall mate with them?
Who knows through the centuries what heroes may come from
them?
In them and of them natal love .... in them the divine mystery .... the same old beautiful mystery.
Have you ever loved a woman?
Your mother .... is she living? .... Have you been much with
her? and has she been much with you?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations
and times all over the earth?
If life and the soul are sacred the human body is sacred;
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood
untainted,
And in man or woman a clean strong firmfibred body is beautiful
as the most beautiful face.
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the
fool that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal
themselves.
Who degrades or defiles the living human body is cursed,
Who degrades or defiles the body of the dead is not more
cursed.
[Faces]
SAUNTERING the pavement or riding the country byroads here
then are faces,
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, sauvity, ideality,
The spiritual prescient face, the always welcome common
benevolent face,
The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural
lawyers and judges broad at the backtop,
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows .... the
shaved blanched faces of orthodox citizens,
The pure extravagant yearning questioning artist’s face,
The welcome ugly face of some beautiful soul .... the handsome
detested or despised face,
The sacred faces of infants .... the illuminated face of the
mother of many children,
The face of an amour .... the face of veneration,
The face as of a dream .... the face of an immobile rock,
The face withdrawn of its good and bad .. a castrated
face,
A wild hawk .. his wings clipped by the clipper,
A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the
gelder.
Sauntering the pavement or crossing the ceaseless ferry, here then
are faces;
I see them and complain not and am content with all.
Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them
their own finale?
This now is too lamentable a face for a man;
Some abject
louse asking leave to be .. cringing for it,
Some milknosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.
This face is a dog’s snout sniffing for garbage;
Snakes nest in that mouth .. I hear the sibilant threat.
This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,
Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.
This is a face of bitter herbs .... this an emetic .... they need no
label,
And more of the drugshelf .. laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog’s
lard.41
This face is an epilepsy advertising and doing business .... its
wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry,
Its veins down the neck distend .... its eyes roll till they show
nothing but their whites,
Its teeth grit .. the palms of the hands are cut by the turned-in
nails,
The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he
speculates well.
This face is bitten by vermin and worms,
And this is some murderer’s knife with a halfpulled scabbard.
This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,
An unceasing deathbell tolls there.
Those are really men! .... the bosses and tufts of the great round
globe!
Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creased and
cadaverous march?
Well then you cannot trick me.
I see your rounded never-erased flow,
I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.
Splay and twist as you like .... poke with the tangling fores of
fishes or rats,
You’ll be unmuzzled .... you certainly will.
I saw the face of the most smeared and slobbering idiot they had
at the asylum,
And I knew for my consolation what they knew not;
I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,42
The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement;
And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharmed, every