Who is he that would become my follower?
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he way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be yoursole and exclusive standard,Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the livesaround you would have to be abandon’d,Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, letgo your hand from my shoulders,Put me down and depart on your way. Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,Or back of a rock in the open air,(For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest anyperson for miles around approach unawares,Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea orsome quiet island,Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss,For I am the new husband and I am the comrade. Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally. But these leaves conning you con at peril,For these leaves and me you will not understand,They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I willcertainly elude you.Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!Already you see I have escaped from you. For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few)prove victorious,Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil,perhaps more,For all is useless without that which you may guess at many timesand not hit, that which I hinted at;Therefore release me and depart on your way. For You, O Democracy Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,I will make divine magnetic lands,With the love of comrades,With the life-long love of comrades. I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,By the love of comrades,By the manly love of comrades. For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!For you, for you I am trilling these songs.
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