I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease... observing a spear of summer grass.
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 trees, and of hay in the barn, The sound of the belched 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.
Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? who is it good to be born? Is the amaranth and the river a happier man than I? Is the farmer a greater man than the patient who drinks at his own cask? Are the boatman, the blacksmith, the mason, the shoemaker, the carpenter, the ploughman, the weaver, the dyer, the fisher, the hunter, the sailor, the soldier, the clerk, the legislator, the preacher, the thief, the publican, or the citizen by virtue of their calling more to be envied?
I will not have a single person slighted or left away, The kept-woman, sponger, thief, who is glad to be in the street, The runaway slave returned to the bondsmen, the crippled boy, the handmaid, the wife, the mother, I will have none of them excluded from the procession, none objected to or despised.