Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/442

O my mother was loth to have her go away!
All the week she thought of her—she watched for
her many a month,
She remembered her many a winter and many a
summer,
But the red squaw never came, nor was heard of
there again.

44.Now Lucifer was not dead—or if he was, I am his
sorrowful terrible heir,
I have been wronged—I am oppressed—I hate him
that oppresses me,
I will either destroy him, or he shall release me.

45.Damn him! how he does defile me!
How he informs against my brother and sister, and
takes pay for their blood!
How he laughs when I look down the bend, after the
steamboat that carries away my woman!

46.Now the vast dusk bulk that is the whale's bulk, it
seems mine,
Warily, sportsman! though I lie so sleepy and sluggish,
my tap is death.

47.A show of the summer softness! a contact of something
unseen! an amour of the light and air!
I am jealous, and overwhelmed with friendliness,
And will go gallivant with the light and air myself,
And have an unseen something to be in contact with
them also.

48.O love and summer! you are in the dreams, and
in me!