"I say Nature continues, glory continues, I praise with electric voice, For I do not see one imperfection in the universe, And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe."

"As I roam'd the streets of inland Chicago, whatever streets I have roam'd, Or cities or silent woods, or even amid the sights of war, Wherever I have been I have charged myself with contentment and triumph."

"I too carol the sun, usher'd or at noon, or as now, setting, I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the growths of the earth, I too have felt the resistless call of myself."

"We two, how long we were fool'd, Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes, We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return…"

"I love you, before long I die, I have travel'd a long way merely to look on you to touch you, For I could not die till I once look'd on you, For I fear'd I might afterward lose you."

"To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom! With one brief hour of madness and joy."

"To escape utterly from others' anchors and holds! To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous! To court destruction with taunts, with invitations! To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!"

"O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last! To be absolv'd from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and you from yours! To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature! To have the gag remov'd from one's mouth! To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am."

"O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me in defiance of the world!"

"O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man! O savage and tender achings!"

"What is this that frees me so in storms? What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?"

"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…"

"I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality, I plant so lovingly now."

"I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated within me."

"I draw you close to me, you women, I cannot let you go, I would do you good, I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for others' sakes, Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards, They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me."

"Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex, Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers."

"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."

"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."

"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!"

"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,) I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems… (9)"

"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. (8)"

"If any thing is 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, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful than the most beautiful face. (8)"

"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? (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. (8)"

"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? (Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace back through the centuries?) (7)"

"Gentlemen look on this wonder, 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. (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. (7)"

"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, For you only, and not for him and her? (6)"

"All is a procession, The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion. (6)"

"The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred, No matter who it is, it is sacred… (6)"

"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…(6)"

"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, She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters. (5)"

"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. (4)"

"The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account, That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect. (2)"

"I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

"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. (1)"

"I willingly stake all for you, O let me be lost if it must be so! O you and I! what 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 so;)"

"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 resonant, singing the phallus, Singing the song of procreation…"

"To the garden the world anew ascending, Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding, The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being, Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber, The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again, Amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous…"

"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless…"

"Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you."

"One's-self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. …The Female equally with the Male I sing. Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine, The Modern Man I sing."

"I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any, Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering, (Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the field the world, For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul, Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles, I above all promote brave soldiers."

"Then falter not O book, fulfil your destiny, You not a reminiscence of the land alone, You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd I know not whither, yet ever full of faith, Consort to every ship that sails, sail you! Bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I fold it here in every leaf;) Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the imperious waves, Chant on, sail on, bear o'er the boundless blue from me to every sea, This song for mariners and all their ships."

"Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be, I project the history of the future."

"To thee old cause! Thou peerless, passionate, good cause, Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea, Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands, After a strange sad war, great war for thee, (I think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be really fought, for thee,) These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee."

"I met a seer, Passing the hues and objects of the world, The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean eidolons. Put in thy chants said he, No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in, Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all, That of eidolons."

"All space, all time, (The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns, Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,) Fill'd with eidolons only. The noiseless myriads, The infinite oceans where the rivers empty, The separate countless free identities, like eyesight, The true realities, eidolons. Not this the world, Nor these the universes, they the universes, Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life, Eidolons, eidolons."