Leaves of Grass. Walt Whitman

and responsive to my caresses,

       Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,

       Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,

       Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.

       His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him,

       His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.

       I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,

       Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them?

       Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.

       33

       Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess'd at,

       What I guess'd when I loaf'd on the grass,

       What I guess'd while I lay alone in my bed,

       And again as I walk'd the beach under the paling stars of the morning.

       My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,

       I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,

       I am afoot with my vision.

       By the city's quadrangular houses—in log huts, camping with lumber-men,

       Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,

       Weeding my onion-patch or hosing rows of carrots and parsnips,

       crossing savannas, trailing in forests,

       Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase,

       Scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the

       shallow river,

       Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the

       buck turns furiously at the hunter,

       Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the

       otter is feeding on fish,

       Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,

       Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the

       beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tall;

       Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower'd cotton plant, over

       the rice in its low moist field,

       Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum and

       slender shoots from the gutters,

       Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav'd corn, over the

       delicate blue-flower flax,

       Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with

       the rest,

       Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;

       Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low

       scragged limbs,

       Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush,

       Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot,

       Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great

       goldbug drops through the dark,

       Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to

       the meadow,

       Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous

       shuddering of their hides,

       Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle

       the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;

       Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders,

       Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs,

       Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, (floating in it

       myself and looking composedly down,)

       Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat

       hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,

       Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it,

       Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke,

       Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water,

       Where the half-burn'd brig is riding on unknown currents,

       Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupting below;

       Where the dense-starr'd flag is borne at the head of the regiments,

       Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island,

       Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance,

       Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood outside,

       Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of

       base-ball,

       At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license,

       bull-dances, drinking, laughter,

       At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the

       juice through a straw,

       At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,

       At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings;

       Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles,

       screams, weeps,

       Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks are

       scatter'd, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel,

       Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the stud to

       the mare, where the cock is treading the hen,

       Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks,

       Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie,

       Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles

       far and near,

       Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived

       swan is curving and winding,

       Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her

       near-human laugh,

       Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the

       high weeds,

       Where band-neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground with

       their heads out,

       Where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates of a cemetery,

       Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees,

       Where the yellow-crown'd heron comes to the edge of the marsh at

       night and feeds upon small crabs,

       Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon,

       Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over

       the well,

       Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves,

       Through the salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs,

       Through the gymnasium, through the curtain'd saloon, through the

       office or public hall;

       Pleas'd with the native and pleas'd with the foreign, pleas'd with