Soul

Bird sighs for the air, Thought for I know not where, For the womb the seed sighs. Now sinks the same rest On mind, on nest, On straining thighs.

I must lie down where all the ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

If soul may look and body touch, Which is the more blest?

I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes, But when this soul, its body off, Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows.

Whatever flames upon the night Man’s own resinous heart has fed.

It is this, it is this that oppresses my soul.

There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry— This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll— How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul!

Adventure most unto itself The Soul condemned to be— Attended by a single Hound Its own identity.

The Brain—is wider than the Sky— For—put them side by side— The one the other will contain With ease—and You—beside.

No Rack can torture me— My Soul—at Liberty— Behind this mortal Bone There knits a bolder One—

“Hope” is the thing with feathers— That perches in the soul— And sings the tune without the words— And never stops—at all—

And if I drink oblivion of a day, So shorten I the stature of my soul.

Her cabined, ample spirit It fluttered and failed for breath. Tonight it doth inherit The vasty hall of death.

Hither and thither spins The windborne, mirroring soul; A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole.

We cannot kindle when we will The fire that in the heart resides, The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides.

Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.

Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful: The seeds of godlike power are in us still: Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.

Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed.

In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?