Walt Whitman - American Poet

This one is on animals:

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousnds of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them, They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.

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Quotations:

... "What is less or more than a touch?" ... Logic and sermons never convince

"I carry the plenum of proof and everything else in my face"

"whoever is not in his coffin and dark grave, let him know he has enough"

"Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lill I like, the hum of your walved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you help my feet.

Swiftly rose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers ...

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On the female form:

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 ungorvernable,
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 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.