Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/399





you are, I fear you are walking the walks of
 * dreams,

I fear those realities are to melt from under your feet
 * and hands;

Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade,
 * manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate
 * away from you,

Your true Soul and body appear before me, They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce,
 * shops, law, science, work, farms, clothes, the
 * house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating,
 * drinking, suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you,
 * that you be my poem,

I whisper with my lips close to your ear, I have loved many women and men, but I love none
 * better than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb, I should have made my way straight to you long ago, I should have blabbed nothing but you, I should have
 * chanted nothing but you. (391)