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Leaves of Grass.
199

(See! from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last!
See—the prismatic colors, glistening and rolling!)
Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,
Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting
another,
From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the
swell,
Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of
liquid or soil,
Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented
and thrown,
A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves
floating, drifted at random,
Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature,
Just as much, whence we come, that blare of the
cloud-trumpets;
We, capricious, brought hither, we know not whence,
spread out before You, up there, walking or
sitting,
Whoever you are—we too lie in drifts at your feet.





2.



1. Great are the myths—I too delight in them,
Great are Adam and Eve—I too look back and
accept them,
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets,
women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors, and
priests.