Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/382

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374
Calamus.

35.

To you of New England,
To the man of the Seaside State, and of Pennsylvania,
To the Kanadian of the north—to the Southerner I
love,
These, with perfect trust, to depict you as myself—
the germs are in all men;
I believe the main purport of These States is to found
a superb friendship, exalté, previously unknown,
Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting,
latent in all men.

36.

Earth! my likeness!
Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric
there,
I now suspect that is not all;
I now suspect there is something fierce in you, eligible
to burst forth;
For an athlete is enamoured of me—and I of him.
But toward him there is something fierce and terrible
in me, eligible to burst forth,
I dare not tell it in words—not even in these songs.