"I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and
I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them,
respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul. [...]"
"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 downwards towards the knees,
the thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow 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!"