Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/314

306 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 crushed 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-formed stings that sights, people, objects, sting
 * me with,

The hubbed sting of myself, stinging me as much as it
 * ever can any one,

The sensitive, orbic, underlapped 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 woman that flushes and flushes, and the
 * young man that flushes and flushes,

The young man that wakes, deep at night, the hot
 * hand seeking to repress what would master him
 * —the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats,

The pulse pounding through palms and trembling
 * encircling fingers—the young man all colored,
 * red, ashamed, angry;