mother never turning her vigilant eyes from them, The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen’d long-round walnuts, The continence of vegetables, birds, animals, The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself indecent, while birds and animals never once skulk or find themselves indecent, The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of maternity, The oath of procreation I have sworn, my Adamic and fresh daughters, The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I saturate what shall produce boys to fill my place when I am through, The wholesome relief, repose, content, And this bunch pluck’d at random from myself, It has done its work—I toss it carelessly to fall where it may.
One Hour to Madness and Joy
One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not! (What is this that frees me so in storms? What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man! O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you, my children, I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)
O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me in defiance of the world! O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine! O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determin’d man.
O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all untied and illumin’d! O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last! To be absolv’d from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and you from yours! To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature! To have the gag remov’d from one’s mouth! To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.