I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.

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.

The wild bee reels from bough to bough
    With his furry coat and his gauzy wing.
Now in a lily-cup, and now
    Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
            In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
            I made that vow,

Swore that two lives should be like one
    As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun,—
    It shall be, I said, for eternity
            ‘Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done.
            Love’s web is spun.

Look upward where the poplar trees
    Sway in the summer air,
Here n the valley never a breeze
    Scatters the thistledown, but there
            Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
            And the wave-lashed leas.

Look upward where the white gull screams,
    What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
    On some outward voyaging argosy,—
            Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
            How sad it seems.

Sweet, there is nothing left to say
    But this, that love is never lost,
Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
    Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
            Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbor in some bay,
            And so we may.

And there is nothing left to do
    But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
    I have my beauty,—you your Art,
            Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
            Like me and you.

Within the restless, hurried, modern world
    We took our hearts’ full pleasure—You and I,
And now the white sails of our ships are furled,
    And spent the lading of our argosy.

Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,
    For very weeping is my gladness fled,
Sorrow hath paled my lip’s vermilion
    And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.

But all this crowded life has been to thee
    No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell
Of viols, or the music of the sea
    That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.