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 vapor, all falls aside
   but myself and it,
 Books, art, religion, time, the visible and
   solid earth, 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.

This the nucleus -- after the child is born of
   woman, man is born of woman,
 This the bath of birth, this the merge of
   small and large, and the outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege
   encloses the rest, and is the exit of the 
   rest,
 You are the gates of the body, and you are
   the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities and
   tempers them,
 She is in her place and moves with perfect
   balance,
 She is all things duly veil'd, she is both
   passive and active,
 She is to conceive daughters as well as sons,
   and sons as well as daughters.

As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
 As I see through a mist, One with
   inexpressible completeness, sanity, beauty,
 See the bent head and arms folded over the
   breast, the Female I see.