object:1.whitman - From Pent-up Aching Rivers
author class:Walt Whitman
subject class:Poetry
book class:Whitman - Poems
class:chapter
FROM pent-up, aching rivers;
From that of myself, without which I were nothing;
From what I am determin'd to make illustrious, even if I stand sole
among men;
From my own voice resonantsinging the phallus,
Singing the song of procreation,
Singing the need of superb children, and therein superb grown people,
Singing the muscular urge and the blending,
Singing the bedfellow's song, (O resistless yearning!
O for any and each, the body correlative attracting!
O for you, whoever you are, your correlative body! O it, more than
all else, you delighting!)
From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day;
From native momentsfrom bashful painssinging them;
Singing something yet unfound, though I have diligently sought it,
many a long year;
Singing the true song of the Soul, fitful, at random;
Singing what, to the Soul, entirely redeem'd her, the faithful one,
even the prostitute, who detain'd me when I went to the city;
Singing the song of prostitutes;
Renascent with grossest Nature, or among animals;
Of thatof them, and what goes with them, my poems informing;
Of the smell of apples and lemonsof the pairing of birds,
Of the wet of woodsof the lapping of waves,
Of the mad pushes of waves upon the landI them chanting;
The overture lightly soundingthe strain anticipating;
The welcome nearnessthe sight of the perfect body;
The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his back
lying and floating;
The female form approachingI, pensive, love-flesh tremulous,
aching;
The divine list, for myself or you, or for any one, making;
The facethe limbsthe index from head to foot, and what it
arouses;
The mystic deliriathe madness amorousthe utter abandonment;
(Hark close, and still, what I now whisper to you,
I love you-O you entirely possess me,
O I wish that you and I escape from the rest, and go utterly offO
free and lawless,
Two hawks in the airtwo fishes swimming in the sea not more lawless
than we
The furious storm through me careeringI passionately trembling;
The oath of the inseparableness of two togetherof the woman that
loves me, and whom I love more than my lifethat oath
swearing;
(O I willingly stake all, for you!
O let me be lost, if it must be so!
O you and Iwhat is it to us what the rest do or think?
What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other, and exhaust
each other, if it must be s
From the masterthe pilot I yield the vessel to;
The general commanding me, commanding allfrom him permission
taking;
From time the programme hastening, (I have loiter'd too long, as it
is
From sexFrom the warp and from the woof;
(To talk to the perfect girl who understands me,
To waft to her these from my own lipsto effuse them from my own
body
From privacyfrom frequent repinings alone;
From plenty of persons near, and yet the right person not near;
From the soft sliding of hands over me, and thrusting of fingers
through my hair and beard;
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;
From what the divine husband knowsfrom the work of fatherhood;
From exultation, victory, and relieffrom the bedfellow's embrace in
the night;
From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips, and bosoms,
From the cling of the trembling arm,
From the bending curve and the clinch,
From side by side, the pliant coverlid off-throwing,
From the one so unwilling to have me leaveand me just as unwilling
to leave,
(Yet a moment, O tender waiter, and I return
From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews,
From the night, a moment, I, emerging, flitting out,
Celebrate you, act divineand you, children prepared for,
And you, stalwart loins.
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