LITMIR.BIZ

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Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

      Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,

       You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

      Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,

       The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

      The beards of the young men glistened with wet, it ran from their long hair,

       Little streams passed all over their bodies.

      An unseen hand also passed over their bodies,

       It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

      The young men float on their backs, their white bellies swell to the sun . . . . they do not ask who seizes fast to them,

       They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,

       They do not think whom they souse with spray.

      The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market,

       I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and breakdown.

      Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,

       Each has his main-sledge . . . . they are all out . . . . there is a great heat in the fire.

      From the cinder-strewed threshold I follow their movements,

       The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,

       Overhand the hammers roll -- overhand so slow -- overhand so sure,

       They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

      The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses . . . . the block swags underneath on its tied-over chain,

       The negro that drives the huge dray of the stoneyard . . . . steady and tall he stands poised on one leg on the stringpiece,

       His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hipband,

       His glance is calm and commanding . . . . he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead,

       The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache . . . . falls on the black of his polish’d and perfect limbs.

      I behold the picturesque giant and love him . . . . and I do not stop there,

       I go with the team also.

      In me the caresser of life wherever moving . . . . backward as well as forward slueing,

       To niches aside and junior bending.

      Oxen that rattle the yoke or halt in the 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 wood-duck on my distant and daylong ramble,

       They rise together, they slowly circle around. . . . . I believe in those winged purposes,

       And acknowledge the red yellow and white playing within me,

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

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

       And the mockingbird in the swamp never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me,

       And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

      The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,

       Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation;

       The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer,

       I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.

      The sharphoofed moose of the north, the cat on the housesill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog,

       The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,

       The brood of the turkeyhen, and she with her halfspread wings,

       I see in them and myself the same old law.

      The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,

       They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

      I am enamoured of growing outdoors,

       Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,

       Of the builders and steerers of ships, of the wielders of axes and mauls, of the drivers of horses,

       I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.

      What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me,

       Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,

       Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,

       Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill,

       Scattering it freely forever.

      The pure contralto sings in the organloft,

       The carpenter dresses his plank . . . . the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,

       The married and unmarried children ride home to their thanksgiving dinner,

       The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,

       The mate stands braced in the whaleboat, lance and harpoon are ready,

       The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,

       The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,

       The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,

       The farmer stops by the bars of a Sunday and looks at the oats and rye,

       The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirmed case,

       He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s bedroom;

       The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,

       He turns his quid of tobacco, his eyes get blurred with the manuscript;

       The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist’s table,

       What is removed drops horribly in a pail;

       The quadroon girl is sold at the stand . . . . the drunkard nods by the barroom stove,

       The machinist rolls up his sleeves . . . . the policeman travels his beat . . . . the gate-keeper marks who pass,

       The young fellow drives the express-wagon . . . . I love him though I do not know him;

       The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,

       The western turkey-shooting draws old and young . . . . some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs,

       Out from the crowd steps the marksman and takes his position and levels his piece;

       The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,

       The woollypates hoe in the sugarfield, the overseer views them from his saddle;

      The bugle calls in the ballroom, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other;

       The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret and harks to the musical rain,

       The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,

       The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,

       The company returns from its excursion, the darkey brings up the rear and bears the well-riddled target,

       The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemmed cloth is offering moccasins and beadbags for sale,

       The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with halfshut eyes bent sideways,

       The deckhands make fast the steamboat, the plank

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