Song of Myself

The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block

swags underneath on its tied-over chain,

The negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady

and tall he stands pois'd on one leg on the string-piece,

His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens

over his hip-band,

His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of

his hat away from his forehead,

The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the

black of his polish'd and perfect limbs.

I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not

stop there,

I go with the team also.

In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well

as forward sluing,

To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object

missing,

Absorbing all to myself and for this song.

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade,

what is that you express in your eyes?

It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my

distant and day-long ramble,

They rise together, they slowly circle around.

I believe in those wing'd purposes,

And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,

And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional,

And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not

something else,

And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills

pretty well to me,

And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.