I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other. Loaf with me on the grass, loose the… - Walt Whitman

Loafe with me on the grass — loose the stop from your throat;
Not words, not music or rhyme I want — not custom or lecture, not even the best;
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.

Loafe with me on the grass.... loose the stop from
your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want.... not custom
or lecture,
not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer
morning;
You settled your head athwart my hips and gently
turned over
upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and
plunged your
tongue to my barestript heart,
And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till
you held my
feet.

All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
(What is less or more than a touch?)
Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884.

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest
scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara — nor you, ye limitless prairies — nor
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite — nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-
loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones — nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes — nor Mississippi's stream: — This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name — the
still small voice vibrating — America's choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen — the act itself the main, the
quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd — sea-board and inland — Texas to Maine — the Prairie States — Vermont, Virginia,
California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West — the paradox and con-
flict,
The countless snow-flakes falling — (a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:)
the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity — welcoming the darker odds, the dross: — Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify — while the
heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw its patches down upon me also, The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?