Song of Myself, II
by Walt Whitman
Houses and rooms are full of
perfumes, the shelves are crowded
with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and
know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate
me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume,
it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in
love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood
and become undisguised and
naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with
me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers,
love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the
beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry
leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay
in the barn,
The sound of the belch’d words of
my voice loos’d to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces,
a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the
trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of
the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon
trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckon’d a thousand
acres much? have you reckon’d the
earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn
to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the
meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me
and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the
earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at
second or third hand, nor look
through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on
the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes
either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter
them from your self.