fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007 - Ethical Culture ...

27611 To be in any form, what is that?612 (Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,)613 If nothing lay more develop’d the quahaug in its callous shell were enough.614 Mine is no callous shell,615 I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,616 They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.617 I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,618 To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.28619 Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,620 Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,621 Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,622 My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself,623 On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,624 Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,625 Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,626 Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,627 Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist,628 Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields,629 Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,630 They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me,631 No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,632 Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while,633 Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.634 The sentries desert every other part of me,635 They have left me helpless to a red marauder,636 They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.637 I am given up by traitors,638 I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest traitor,639 I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there.640 You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat,641 Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.29642 Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath’d hooded sharp-tooth’d touch!643 Did it make you ache so, leaving me?644 Parting track’d by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan,645 Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.646 Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital,647 Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden.30648 All truths wait in all things,649 They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,650 They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,651 The insignificant is as big to me as any,652 (What is less or more than a touch?)653 Logic and sermons never convince,155