I Sing the Body Electric

Walt Whitman

This is the female form;

A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot;
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction!
I am drawn by its breath as if I were
no more than a helpless vapour -
all falls aside but myself and it;
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and
solid earth, the atmosphere and the clouds,
and what was expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are
now consumed;
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it -
the response likewise ungovernable;
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs,
negligent falling hands, all diffused -
mine too diffused;
Ebb stung by the flow, and flow stung by the ebb -
love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching;
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous,
quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice;
Bridegroom night of love, working surely and softly
into the prostrate dawn;
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.