Song of Myself

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are

crowded with perfumes,

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,

The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the

distillation, it is odorless,

It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised

and naked,

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,

Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread,

crotch and vine,

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the

passing of blood and air through my lungs,

The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and

dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the

eddies of the wind,

A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,

The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs

wag,

The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the

fields and hill-sides,

The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising

from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd

the earth much?

Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the

origin of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are

millions of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor

look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the

spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things

from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.