Short Poems

O BOY of the West!
To you many things to absorb, I teach, to help you become eleve of
mine:
Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins;
If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently select
lovers,
Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine?

THAT shadow, my likeness, that goes to and fro, seeking a livelihood,
chattering, chaffering;
How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits;
How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;
--But in these, and among my lovers, and caroling my songs,
O I never doubt whether that is really me.

SOMETIMES with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse
unreturn'd love;
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love--the pay is certain, one
way or another;
(I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd;
Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)

FAST-ANCHOR'D, eternal, O love! O woman I love!
O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!
--Then separate, as disembodied, or another born,
Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation;
I ascend--I float in the regions of your love, O man,
O sharer of my roving life.

I DREAM'D in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the
whole of the rest of the earth;
I dream'd that was the new City of Friends;
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love--it led the
rest;
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.

HERE the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest-lasting:
Here I shade and hide my thoughts--I myself do not expose them,
And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.

ONLY themselves understand themselves, and the like of themselves,
As Souls only understand Souls.

I AM he that aches with amorous love;
Does the earth gravitate? Does not all matter, aching, attract all
matter?
So the Body of me, to all I meet, or know.

AS Adam, early in the morning,
Walking forth from the bower, refresh'd with sleep;
Behold me where I pass--hear my voice--approach,
Touch me--touch the palm of your hand to my Body as I pass;
Be not afraid of my Body.

O HYMEN! O hymenee!
Why do you tantalize me thus?
O why sting me for a swift moment only?
Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?
Is it because, if you continued beyond the swift moment, you would
soon certainly kill me?