"Ah, lover and perfect equal!
I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections;
And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the like in you."
"O you, to whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may
be with you
As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room
with you,
Little you know the subtle electric fire that, for your sake, is playing
within me!"
… I ascend, I float in the regions of your love, O man!
O sharer of my roving life!
There are dozens of such passages in Whitman. They culminate in certain outspoken idyls of psychic and physical homosexuality; as the impassioned nocturne, "When I heard at the close of the day"; the threnody "Vigil strange I kept on the field one night"! in many lines of "The Song of the Open Road"—which ends with its manly, joyful acclaim of the comrade-lover "Camarado, I will give you my hand in the retrospective "As I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado"; and in the lines ending "Paumanok" that are like an orgasm—"O, Camarado, close! O you and me at last, and only!" In numerous utterances Whitman, proclaims his socratic mission; admits the accusation of immorality that is cast at him; retorts with his intention to he frightened by no modern conventionalities; hints his recognition of the uranian nature of Christ; affirms the profound and antique concept of male love, which modern religions and ethics obscure. In the most solemnly, widely purposeful, as in the most lyrically personal Whitman, whom we meet throughout "Leaves of Grass", is to be heard a new voice, if with an accent classically old, in its philosophic message of conviction as to the purity, the naturalness of true uranian love and its high mission to the individual and toward nations.
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