O my body! I dare not desert the likes of
   you in other men and women, nor the
   likes of the parts of you,
 I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall
   with the likes of the soul, (and that they 
   are the soul,)
 I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall
   with my poems, and that they are my 
   poems,
 Man's, woman's, child's, youth's, wife's,
   husband's, mother's, father's, young
   man's, young woman's poems,
 Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of 
   the ears, 
 Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows,
   and the waking or sleeping of the lids,
 Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the 
   mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,
 Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
 Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat,
   back of the neck, neck-slue,
 Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula,
   hind-shoulders, and the ample side-
   round of the chest,
 Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-
   arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
 Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm,
   knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints,
   finger-nails,
 Broad breast-front, curling hair of the
   breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
 Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the
   backbone,
 Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and
   outward round, man-balls, man-root,
 Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk
   above,
 Leg fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg,
   under-leg,
 Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the
   heel;
 All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the
   belongings of my or your body or of any
   one's body, male or female,
 The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the 
   bowels sweet and clean,
 The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
 Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves,
   sexuality, maternity,
 Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and 
   the man that comes from woman,
 The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk,
   tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-
   perturbations and risings,
 The voice, articulation, language,
   whispering, shouting aloud,
 Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep,
   walking, swimming,
 Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining,
   embracing, arm-curving and tightening,
 The continual changes of the flex of the 
   mouth, and around the eyes,
 The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
 The curious sympathy one feels when 
    feeling with the hand the naked meat of
    the body,
 The circling rivers the breath, and breathing
    it in and out,
 The beauty of the waist, and thence of the
    hips, and thence downward toward the 
    knees,
 The thin red jellies within you or within
    me, the bones and the morrow in the
    bones,
 The exquisite realization of health;
 O I say these are not the parts and poems of
    the body only, but of the soul,
 O I say now these are the soul!