Walt Whitman
Copyright 2004. Pat @ Close. All Rights Reserved.
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Leaves of Grass

A Walt Whitman Collection

Book II. Starting From Paumanok

Chapter XV

With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.
For your life adhere to me,
(I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give
     myself really to you, but what of that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)

No dainty dolce affettuoso I,
Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck`d, forbidding, I have arrived,
To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,
For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.