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"OXEN THAT RATTLE THE

YOKE AND CHAIN "

(From

"Walt Whitman ")

By Walt Whitman

XEN that rattle the yoke and chain, or halt in the leafy

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shade!

What is that you express in

your eyes?

It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

My tread scares the wood-drake and the woodduck, on my distant and day-long ramble;

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they slowly circle around.

I believe in those wing'd purposes,

And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing with

in me,

And consider green and violet, and the tufted crown, intentional;

And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else;

And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me;

And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out

of me.

BARE-BOSOM'D NIGHT

(From

"Walt Whitman")

By Walt Whitman

AM he that walks with the tender and growing night;

I call to the earth and sea, half-
held by the night.

Press close, bare-bosom'd night!
Press close, magnetic, nourishing

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night!

Night of south winds! night of the large few stars!
Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night.

Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath'd earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees;

Earth of departed sunset! earth of the mountains, misty-topt!

Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with blue!

Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and clearer for my sake!

Far-swooping elbow'd earth! rich, apple-blossom'd earth!

Smile, for your lover comes!

Prodigal, you have given me love! Therefore I to you give love!

O unspeakable, passionate love!

YOU SEA!

(From Walt Whitman ")

By Walt Whitman

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OU sea! I resign myself to you

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mean;

- I guess what you

I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers;

I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me;

We must have a turn together I undress

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hurry me out of sight of the land;

Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse;

Dash me with amorous wet

Sea of stretch'd ground-swells!

I can repay you.

Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths! Sea of the brine of life! sea of unshovell'd yet always-ready graves!

Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea!

I am integral with you I too am of one phase,

and of all phases.

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THIS COMPOST

(From "Leaves of Grass ")

By Walt Whitman

I

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OMETHING startles me where
I thought I was safest;

I withdraw from the still woods
I loved;

I will not go now on the past-
ures to walk ;

I will not strip the clothes from

my body to meet my lover

the sea;

I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.

2

O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?

How can you be alive, you growths of spring? How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?

Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?

Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations;

Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and

meat?

I do not see any of it upon you to-day

haps I am deceiv'd;

or per

I will run a furrow with my plough-I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it up underneath;

I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

3

Behold this compost! behold it well!

Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person - Yet behold!

The grass of spring covers the prairies,

The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,

The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the applebranches,

The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,

The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,

The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests,

The young of poultry break through the hatched

eggs,

The new-born of animals appear

the calf is dropt

from the cow, the colt from the mare,

Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark

green leaves,

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