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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=535024" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>I Sing The Body Electric</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I SING the Body electric;<br> The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;<br> They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,<br> And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the<br> Soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal<br> themselves;<br> And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the<br> dead?<br> And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?<br> And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> The love of the Body of man or woman balks account--the body itself<br> balks account;<br> That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect. 10</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> The expression of the face balks account;<br> But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face;<br> It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of<br> his hips and wrists;<br> It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist<br> and knees--dress does not hide him;<br> The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes through the cotton<br> and flannel;<br> To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more;<br> You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-<br> side.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the<br> folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the<br> contour of their shape downwards,<br> The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the<br> transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up, and rolls<br> silently to and fro in the heave of the water,<br> The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats--the horseman<br> in his saddle,   20<br> Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,<br> The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-<br> kettles, and their wives waiting,<br> The female soothing a child--the farmer's daughter in the garden or<br> cow-yard,<br> The young fellow hoeing corn--the sleigh-driver guiding his six<br> horses through the crowd,<br> The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,<br> good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown,<br> after work,<br> The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,<br> The upper-hold and the under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding<br> the eyes;<br> The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine<br> muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,<br> The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes<br> suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,<br> The natural, perfect, varied attitudes--the bent head, the curv'd<br> neck, and the counting;   30<br> Such-like I love--I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother's<br> breast with the little child,<br> Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with<br> the firemen, and pause, listen, and count.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> I know a man, a common farmer--the father of five sons;<br> And in them were the fathers of sons--and in them were the fathers of<br> sons.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person;<br> The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and<br> beard, and the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes--the<br> richness and breadth of his manners,<br> These I used to go and visit him to see--he was wise also;<br> He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old--his sons were<br> massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome;<br> They and his daughters loved him--all who saw him loved him;<br> They did not love him by allowance--they loved him with personal<br> love;    40<br> He drank water only--the blood show'd like scarlet through the clear-<br> brown skin of his face;<br> He was a frequent gunner and fisher--he sail'd his boat himself--he<br> had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner--he had<br> fowling-pieces, presented to him by men that loved him;<br> When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,<br> you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of<br> the gang.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> You would wish long and long to be with him--you would wish to sit by<br> him in the boat, that you and he might touch each other.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,<br> To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,<br> To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is<br> enough,<br> To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly<br> round his or her neck for a moment--what is this, then?<br> I do not ask any more delight--I swim in it, as in a sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on<br> them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the<br> soul well;    50<br> All things please the soul--but these please the soul well.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> This is the female form;<br> A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot;<br> It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction!<br> I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor--<br> all falls aside but myself and it;<br> Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, the<br> atmosphere and the clouds, and what was expected of heaven or<br> fear'd of hell, are now consumed;<br> Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it--the response<br> likewise ungovernable;<br> Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands, all<br> diffused--mine too diffused;<br> Ebb stung by the flow, and flow stung by the ebb--love-flesh swelling<br> and deliciously aching;<br> Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of<br> love, white-blow and delirious juice;  60<br> Bridegroom night of love, working surely and softly into the<br> prostrate dawn;<br> Undulating into the willing and yielding day,<br> Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> This is the nucleus--after the child is born of woman, the man is<br> born of woman;<br> This is the bath of birth--this is the merge of small and large, and<br> the outlet again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Be not ashamed, women--your privilege encloses the rest, and is the<br> exit of the rest;<br> You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> The female contains all qualities, and tempers them--she is in her<br> place, and moves with perfect balance;<br> She is all things duly veil'd--she is both passive and active;<br> She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as<br> daughters.    70</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> As I see my soul reflected in nature;<br> As I see through a mist, one with inexpressible completeness and<br> beauty,<br> See the bent head, and arms folded over the breast--the female I see.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> The male is not less the soul, nor more--he too is in his place;<br> He too is all qualities--he is action and power;<br> The flush of the known universe is in him;<br> Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well;<br> The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is<br> utmost, become him well--pride is for him;<br> The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul;<br> Knowledge becomes him--he likes it always--he brings everything to<br> the test of himself;   80<br> Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail, he strikes<br> soundings at last only here;<br> (Where else does he strike soundings, except here?)</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> The man's body is sacred, and the woman's body is sacred;<br> No matter who it is, it is sacred;<br> Is it a slave? Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on<br> the wharf?<br> Each belongs here or anywhere, just as much as the well-off--just as<br> much as you;<br> Each has his or her place in the procession.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> (All is a procession;<br> The universe is a procession, with measured and beautiful motion.)</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Do you know so much yourself, that you call the slave or the dull-<br> face ignorant?   90<br> Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has no<br> right to a sight?<br> Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float--and<br> the soil is on the surface, and water runs, and vegetation<br> sprouts,<br> For you only, and not for him and her?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> A man's Body at auction;<br> I help the auctioneer--the sloven does not half know his business.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Gentlemen, look on this wonder!<br> Whatever the bids of the bidders, they cannot be high enough for it;<br> For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years, without one<br> animal or plant;<br> For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll'd.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> In this head the all-baffling brain;  100<br> In it and below it, the makings of heroes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Examine these limbs, red, black, or white--they are so cunning in<br> tendon and nerve;<br> They shall be stript, that you may see them.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,<br> Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant back-bone and neck, flesh not flabby,<br> good-sized arms and legs,<br> And wonders within there yet.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Within there runs blood,<br> The same old blood!<br> The same red-running blood!<br> There swells and jets a heart--there all passions, desires,<br> reachings, aspirations;   110<br> Do you think they are not there because they are not express'd in<br> parlors and lecture-rooms?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> This is not only one man--this is the father of those who shall be<br> fathers in their turns;<br> In him the start of populous states and rich republics;<br> Of him countless immortal lives, with countless embodiments and<br> enjoyments.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring<br> through the centuries?<br> Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace<br> back through the centuries?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> A woman's Body at auction!<br> She too is not only herself--she is the teeming mother of mothers;<br> She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the<br> mothers.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Have you ever loved the Body of a woman?  120<br> Have you ever loved the Body of a man?<br> Your father--where is your father?<br> Your mother--is she living? have you been much with her? and has she<br> been much with you?<br> --Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all, in all<br> nations and times, all over the earth?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred,<br> And the glory and sweet of a man, is the token of manhood untainted;<br> And in man or woman, a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is beautiful<br> as the most beautiful face.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool<br> that corrupted her own live body?<br> For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br> O my Body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,<br> nor the likes of the parts of you;  130<br> I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the<br> Soul, (and that they are the Soul;)<br> I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems--and<br> that they are poems,<br> Man's, woman's, child's, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's,<br> father's, young man's, young woman's poems;<br> Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,<br> Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eye-brows, and the waking or<br> sleeping of the lids,<br> Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-<br> hinges,<br> Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,<br> Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,<br> Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample<br> side-round of the chest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Upper-arm, arm-pit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews,<br> arm-bones,    140<br> Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, fore-finger,<br> finger-balls, finger-joints, finger-nails,<br> Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-<br> side,<br> Ribs, belly, back-bone, joints of the back-bone,<br> Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls,<br> man-root,<br> Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,<br> Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under leg,<br> Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;<br> All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your<br> body, or of any one's body, male or female,<br> The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,<br> The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,  150<br> Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,<br> Womanhood, and all that is a woman--and the man that comes from<br> woman,<br> The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,<br> love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,<br> The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,<br> Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,<br> Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and<br> tightening,<br> The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,<br> The skin, the sun-burnt shade, freckles, hair,<br> The curious sympathy one feels, when feeling with the hand the naked<br> meat of the body,<br> The circling rivers, the breath, and breathing it in and out, 160<br> The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward<br> toward the knees,<br> The thin red jellies within you, or within me--the bones, and the<br> marrow in the bones,<br> The exquisite realization of health;<br> O I say, these are not the parts and poems of the Body only, but of<br> the Soul,<br> O I say now these are the Soul!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Walt+Whitman">Walt Whitman</a><div class=q>
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 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.

 Was it doubted that th..."></div>
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