. . On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs, Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip (625) . . . You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat, Unclench my floodgates, you are too much for me (641 42).
Nor is Whitman so caught up in celebrating the common and the everyday that he fails to notice the tragic:
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case, (He will never sleep any more as he did in his cot in his mother's bedroom) (273 74) . . . The malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table, What is removed drops horrible in the pail; The quadroon girl is
...