Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore, <br />Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly; <br />Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome. <br /> <br />She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank, <br />She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window. <br /> <br />Which of the young men does she like the best? <br />Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her. <br /> <br />Where are you off to, lady? for I see you, <br />You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room. <br /> <br />Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather, <br />The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them. <br /> <br />The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long <br /> hair, <br />Little streams pass'd over their bodies. <br /> <br />An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies, <br />It descended trembling from their temples and ribs. <br /> <br />The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, <br /> they do not ask who seizes fast to them, <br />They do not know who puffs and declines with the pendant and bending <br /> arch, <br />They do not think whom they souse with spray.<br /><br />Walt Whitman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/song-of-myself-xi/
