ARE you the new person drawn toward me?
***
ARE you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what
you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant
manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real
heroic man?
Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya, illusion?
I SAW in Louisiana a live-oak growing
***
I SAW in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of
dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone
there without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it,
and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly
love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana
solitary in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.
WHAT think you I take my pen in hand to record?
***
WHAT think you I take my pen in hand to record?
The battle-ship, perfect-model'd, majestic, that I saw pass the
offing to-day under full sail?
The splendors of the past day? or the splendor of the night that
envelops me?
Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around
me?—no;
But merely of two simple men I saw to-day on the pier in the
midst of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends,
The one to remain hung on the other's neck and passionately
kiss'd him,
While the one to depart tightly prest the one to remain in his
arms.
SOMETIMES with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse
***
SOMETIMES with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse
unreturn'd love,
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is certain one
way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)
Walt Whitman
"Leaves of Grass"
www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/whole....