Skip to content
ReadingWillow structured literacy program for Australian students
Poetry Library

— Stephen Crane

I looked here;

I looked there;

Nowhere could I see my love.

And--this time--

…

Read full poem →

adverb

In an accidental manner; by chance, unexpectedly.

“He discovered penicillin largely accidentally.”

Know more →

Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals

42 lines
Walt Whitman·1819–1892
✦
ges and ages returning at intervals,Undestroy’d, wandering immortal,Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet,I, chanter of Adamic songs,Through the new garden the West, the great cities calling,Deliriate, thus prelude what is generated, offering these, offering myself,Bathing myself, bathing my songs in Sex,Offspring of my loins. We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d We two, how long we were fool’d,Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes morningsand evenings,We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbicand stellar, we are as two comets,We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rollingover each other and interwetting each other,We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influenceof the globe,We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy. O Hymen! O Hymenee! O hymen! O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus?O why sting me for a swift moment only?Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you wouldsoon certainly kill me? I Am He That Aches with Love I am he that aches with amorous love;Does the earth gravitate? does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?So the body of me to all I meet or know.
✦