Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/317

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Enfans d' Adam.
309

O to escape utterly from others' anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and
dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts—with invitations!
To ascend—to leap to the heavens of the love
indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate Soul!
To be lost, if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness
and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.



7.

You and I—what the earth is, we are,
We two—how long we were fooled!
Now delicious, transmuted, swiftly we escape, as
Nature escapes,
We are Nature—long have we been absent, but now
we return,
We become plants, leaves, foliage, roots, bark,
We are bedded in the ground—we are rocks,
We are oaks—we grow in the openings side by side,
We browse—we are two among the wild herds,
spontaneous as any,
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
We are what the locust blossoms are—we drop scent
around the lanes, mornings and evenings,
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables,
minerals,