Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/438

Pier out from the main, let me catch myself with you
and stay—I will not chafe you,
I feel ashamed to go naked about the world.

23.I am curious to know where my feet stand—and
what this is flooding me, childhood or manhood
—and the hunger that crosses the bridge
between.

24.The cloth laps a first sweet eating and drinking,
Laps life-swelling yolks—laps ear of rose-corn, milky
and just ripened;
The white teeth stay, and the boss-tooth advances in darkness,
And liquor is spilled on lips and bosoms by touching
glasses, and the best liquor afterward.

25.I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid,
Perfume and youth course through me, and I am
their wake.

26.It is my face yellow and wrinkled, instead of the
old woman's,
I sit low in a straw-bottom chair, and carefully darn
my grandson's stockings.

27.It is I too, the sleepless widow looking out on the
winter midnight,
I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid
earth.

28.A shroud I see, and I am the shroud—I wrap a body
and lie in the coffin,