Song of Myself
Walt Whitman

2

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded
         with perfumes,

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,

The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation,
         it is odorless,

It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and
         naked,

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,

Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
         vine,

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing

of blood and air through my lungs,

The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
         dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies
         of the wind,

A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,

The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs
         wag,

The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
         and hillsides,

The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from
         bed and meeting the sun.