Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/383

37.

A Leaf for hand in hand!
You natural persons old and young! You on the
Eastern Sea, and you on the Western!
You on the Mississippi, and on all the branches and
bayous of the Mississippi!
You friendly boatmen and mechanics! You roughs!
You twain! And all processions moving along the
streets!
I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it
common for you to walk hand in hand.

38.

Primeval my love for the woman I love,
O bride! wife! more resistless, more enduring
than I can tell, the thought of you!
Then separate, as disembodied, the purest born,
The ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,
I ascend—I float in the regions of your love, O man,
O sharer of my roving life.

39.

Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for
fear I effuse unreturned love;
But now I think there is no unreturned love—the
pay is certain, one way or another,