| SCENTED herbage of my breast, | |
| Leaves from you I yield, I write, to be perused best afterwards, | |
| Tomb-leaves, body-leaves, growing up above me, above death, | |
| Perennial roots, tall leaves—O the winter shall not freeze you, delicate leaves, | |
| Every year shall you bloom again—out from where you retired, you shall emerge again; | 5 |
| O I do not know whether many, passing by, will discover you, or inhale your faint odor—but I believe a few will; | |
| O slender leaves! O blossoms of my blood! I permit you to tell, in your own way, of the heart that is under you; | |
| O burning and throbbing—surely all will one day be accomplish’d; | |
| O I do not know what you mean, there underneath yourselves—you are not happiness, | |
| You are often more bitter than I can bear—you burn and sting me, | 10 |
| Yet you are very beautiful to me, you faint-tinged roots—you make me think of Death, | |
| Death is beautiful from you—(what indeed is finally beautiful, except Death and Love?) | |
| —O I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of lovers—I think it must be for Death, | |
| For how calm, how solemn it grows, to ascend to the atmosphere of lovers, | |
| Death or life I am then indifferent—my Soul declines to prefer, | 15 |
| I am not sure but the high Soul of lovers welcomes death most; | |
| Indeed, O Death, I think now these leaves mean precisely the same as you mean; | |
| Grow up taller, sweet leaves, that I may see! grow up out of my breast! | |
| Spring away from the conceal’d heart there! | |
| Do not fold yourself so in your pink-tinged roots, timid leaves! | 20 |
| Do not remain down there so ashamed, herbage of my breast! | |
| Come, I am determin’d to unbare this broad breast of mine—I have long enough stifled and choked: | |
| —Emblematic and capricious blade, I leave you—now you serve me not; | |
| Away! I will say what I have to say, by itself, | |
| I will escape from the sham that was proposed to me, | 25 |
| I will sound myself and comrades only—I will never again utter a call, only their call, | |
| I will raise, with it, immortal reverberations through The States, | |
| I will give an example to lovers, to take permanent shape and will through The States; | |
| Through me shall the words be said to make death exhilarating; | |
| Give me your tone therefore, O Death, that I may accord with it, | 30 |
| Give me yourself—for I see that you belong to me now above all, and are folded inseparably together—you Love and Death are; | |
| Nor will I allow you to balk me any more with what I was calling life, | |
| For now it is convey’d to me that you are the purports essential, | |
| That you hide in these shifting forms of life, for reasons—and that they are mainly for you, | |
| That you, beyond them, come forth, to remain, the real reality, | 35 |
| That behind the mask of materials you patiently wait, no matter how long, | |
| That you will one day, perhaps, take control of all, | |
| That you will perhaps dissipate this entire show of appearance, | |
| That may-be you are what it is all for—but it does not last so very long; | |
| But you will last very long. | 40 |
