Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride,
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain,
So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.

Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets;
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must sleep in those beds,
No bargainers' bargains by day—no brokers or speculators—would hey continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.

Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,
Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer,
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,
Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties,
Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.

Spontaneous me, Nature,   
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,   
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,   
The hill-side whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash,   
The same late in autumn, the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green,
The rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, the private untrimm’d bank, the primitive apples, the pebble-stones,   
Beautiful dripping fragments, the negligent list of one after another, as I happen to call them to me or think of them,   
The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)   
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,   
This poem drooping shy and unseen that I always carry, and that all men carry,
(Know once for all, avow’d on purpose, wherever are men like me, are our lusty lurking masculine poems,)   
Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers, and the climbing sap,   
Arms and hands of love, lips of love, phallic thumb of love, breasts of love, bellies press’d and glued together with love,   
Earth of chaste love, life that is only life after love,   
The body of my love, the body of the woman I love, the body of the man, the body of the earth,
Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,   
The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and down, that gripes the full-grown lady-flower, curves upon her with amorous firm legs, takes his will of her, and holds himself tremulous and tight till he is satisfied,   
The wet of woods through the early hours,   
Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one with an arm slanting down across and below the waist of the other,   
The smell of apples, aromas from crush’d sage-plant, mint, birch-bark,
The boy’s longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what he was dreaming,   
The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl, and falling still and content to the ground,   
The no-form’d stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with,   
The hubb’d sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can any one,   
The sensitive, orbic, underlapp’d brothers, that only privileged feelers may be intimate where they are,
The curious roamer, the hand roaming all over the body, the bashful withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves,   
The limpid liquid within the young man,   
The vexed corrosion so pensive and so painful,   
The torment, the irritable tide that will not be at rest,   
The like of the same I feel, the like of the same in others,
The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that flushes and flushes,   
The young man that wakes deep at night, the hot hand seeking to repress what would master him, The mystic amorous night, the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats,   
The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers, the young man all color’d,red, ashamed, angry;   
The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked,
The merriment of the twin babes that crawl over the grass in the sun, the mother never turning her vigilant eyes from them,   
The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen’d long-round walnuts,    
The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,   
The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself indecent, while birds and animals never once skulk or find themselves indecent,   
The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of maternity,
The oath of procreation I have sworn, my Adamic and fresh daughters,   
The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I saturate what shall produce boys to fill my place when I am through,   
The wholesome relief, repose, content,    
And this bunch pluck’d at random from myself,   
It has done its work—I tossed it carelessly to fall where it may. 

Whoever you are holding me now in hand,   
Without one thing all will be useless,   
I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,   
I am not what you supposed, but far different.   
   
Who is he that would become my follower? 
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?   
   
The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,   
You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard,   
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,   
The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to be abandon’d, 
Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let go your hand from my shoulders,   
Put me down, and depart on your way.   
   
Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,   
Or back of a rock in the open air,   
(For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not, nor in company, 
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)   
But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any person for miles around approach unawares,   
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or some quiet island,   
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,   
With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss, 
For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.   
   
Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,   
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,   
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;   
For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
And thus touching you, would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.   
   
But these leaves conning you con at peril,   
For these leaves and me you will not understand,   
They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will certainly elude you,   
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you.   
   
For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,   
Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,   
Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,   
Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few,) prove victorious,
Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps more,    
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which I hinted at;   
Therefore release me and depart on your way.