massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love,
He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the
    clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he
    had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had
    fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,
    you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit
    by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

     4
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly
    round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then? 
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking
    on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

     5
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
    all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what
    was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
    likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
    diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
    and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
    love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn, Undulating into the willing and yielding day, Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

This the nucleus—­after the child is born of woman, man is born of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the
    outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the
    exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters.