O something unprov’d! something in a trance!
To escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and
dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!
To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated
to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate soul!
To be lost if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness
and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.
} Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd
Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently
to me,
Whispering I love you, before long I die,
I have travel’d a long way merely to look on
you to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look’d on you,
For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.
Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so
much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how
perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to
separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry
us diverse forever;
Be not impatient—a little space—know
you I salute the air, the
ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love.
} Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals
Ages and ages returning at intervals,
Undestroy’d, wandering immortal,
Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly
sweet,
I, chanter of Adamic songs,
Through the new garden the West, the great cities
calling,
Deliriate, thus prelude what is generated, offering
these, offering myself,
Bathing myself, bathing my songs in Sex,
Offspring of my loins.
} We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d
We two, how long we were fool’d,
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we
return,
We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,
We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous
as any,
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around
lanes mornings
and evenings,
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables,
minerals,
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look
down,
We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance
ourselves orbic
and stellar, we are as two
comets,
We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods,
we spring on prey,
We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving
overhead,
We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful
waves rolling
over each other and interwetting
each other,
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive,
pervious, impervious,
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product
and influence
of the globe,
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home
again, we two,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own
joy.


