Honors Brit. Lit.

Lying (in an Open Field)

An Allusion to Coleridge's Verse Contained Herein

From Whitman's "A Woman Waits for Me"

I draw you close to me, you women!             

I cannot let you go, I would do you good,     

I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for others’ sakes;           

Envelop’d in you sleep greater heroes and bards,        

They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.               25

 

It is I, you women—I make my way,            

I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable—but I love you,            

I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,               

I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for These States—I press with slow rude muscle,      

I brace myself effectually—I listen to no entreaties,     30

I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated within me.          

 

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,       

In you I wrap a thousand onward years,       

On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,           

The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, new artists, musicians, and singers,     35

The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,    

I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,       

I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you interpenetrate now,             

I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,

I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality, I plant so lovingly now.