This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it.

Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response likewise ungovernable.

Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs,
negligent falling hands all diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice,

Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

A Woman at auction!
She too is not only herself
(A woman at auction)
She is the teeming mother of mothers
(A woman at auction)
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers
(A Woman at auction)
This is the female form

Be not ashamed women,
your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.
This is the female form.

This the nucleus.
After the child is born of woman, man is born of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the outlet again.
Who knows through the centuries what heroes may come from them?

Have you ever loved a woman?
Have you ever loved a woman?
Your mother.....is she living?
Have you been much with her?
And has she been much with you?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and times all over the earth?

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters
Be not ashamed, women.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs
To be surrounded by beautiful curious breathing laughing flesh
This is the female form
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body?
Or the fool that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves

This is the female form.
Who degrades or defiles the living human body is cursed.
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot.
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction.
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it.
Who degrades or defiles the body of the dead is not more cursed.
Be not ashamed, women.

As I see my soul reflected in nature
As I see through a mist
One with inexpressible completeness and beauty--

--See the bent head and arms folded over the breast

Be not ashamed, women

The female I see --

--Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs
--It attracts me with fierce undeniable attraction
--Your privilege encloses the rest

I see the bearer of the great fruit, which is immortality
The good thereof is not tasted by roues, and never can be

This is the female form.
Be not ashamed, women.
Who degrades or defiles the living human body is cursed.
It attracts me with fierce undeniable attraction.

This is the female form.