This Is The Female Form  - by Walt Whitman - American Poet

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 ungorvernable,
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 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.

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.

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.

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.

As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible
completeness, sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the
Female I see.

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Poems/Prose/Verses On Feminine Beauty, On Womankind

"For the first time I felt my marble thighs aglo
when once they leant against your warm and mortal thighs.
My stone mind softened, my heart beat, and my knees quaked,
my veins brimmed full of milk, I laughed and turned to woman
and held the whole world on my bosom like a baby."

The goddess from the distant beach that Odysseus had made love to, The Odyssey - A Modern Sequel, by Nikos Kazantzakis, Verses 177-181

"Where are you going, to the crags of man, to the cliffs of the mind?
Where are you going, beautiful body, smashed like a jug?
My breast is your native land, for no matter where you go,
you'll not find such a tranquil port, such sweet oblivion.
The soul of woman is very sweet, for it is filled with flesh!"

The goddess from the distant beach that Odysseus had made love to, after Odysseus set sail - Verses 373-377

"Death masqueraded like the virgin of a noble tribe...
Lucky that worthy man who sleeps with her as bridegroom!
This is the sweetest siren of all, see how she waves!
See how her holy bosom yearns to suckle men!
Dear God, to build a home at length, to smash my ship,
to make a crossbeam of its mast, its hull a bed,
and its old, sea embattled prow my own son's cradle!
But I made my heart stone..." Odysseus, on the aforementioned goddess, Verses 416-422

"Odysseus sealed his bitter lips and spoke no more...
and suddenly shook with fear, and sighed for now he knew
that even his native land was a sweet mask of Death." Odysseus, Verses 405-
The Odyssey - A Modern Sequel, by Nikos Kazantzakis

"A Woman's body is a dark and monstrous mystery; between her supple thighs a heavy whirlpool swirls, two rivers crash, and woe to him who slips and falls!" Granite The Suffering Man (killed his brother for a young lovely maid) - The Odyssey - A Modern Sequel, by Nikos Kazantzakis, Verses 1017 - 1019

"How many years it's taken, he muttered, how many years for earth to succeed in making a body like that! You looked at her and said: Ah! if only I were twenty and the whole race of men disappeared from the earth and only that woman remained, and I gave her children! No, not children, real gods they'd be... Whereas now..."

Zorba speaking, Zorba The Greek (on the Greek widow that was beheaded in revenge for the village elder's son who drowned himself for her unrequieted love) by Nikos Kazantzakis.

"Deep down, a woman is a poet. Not that she writes poetry. She lives it. And she knows how to trust - it comes easy to her, it comes spontaneously to her. In fact, for a woman to doubt is a difficult task. She will have to learn science from a man. She is illogical, irrational. Those are not good qualities as far as the world is concerned - they are disqualifications - but as far as the inner world of God is concerned, they are the qualifications.

Man cannot have both worlds. At the most he can have one where he's topmost: the outer world. He can have it, but then he will have to lose the other. There he cannot be at the top; he will have to follow women.

Have you seen Jesus being crucified? No male disciple was near him, only women - because the male disciples started doubting. This man cured illness, this man revived dead people, and now he cannot save himself? Then what is the point of believing in him and trusting in him?

They were waiting for a miracle. They were hiding in the crowd and waiting for a miracle, for something miraculous to happen. Then they would have believed. They needed proof and the proof never happened; Jesus simply died like an ordinary man.

But the women were not waiting for proof. Jesus was enough proof, there was no need for any miracle. He was the miracle. They could see the miracle that happened that moment - that Jesus died with such deep love and compassion. Even for his murderers he had a prayer in his heart. His last words were, "God forgive them because they don't know what they are doing."

The miracle had happened, but for the male eye it never happened. The women around there understood immediately. They trusted this man and this man's innermost heart was opened to them. They understood that the miracle had happened. The man had been crucified and he was dying with love, which is the most impossible thing in the world: to die on the cross with a prayer for those who are killing you."

Rajneesh - Come Follow Me

"Ah! Bel ermite! Bel ermite!... Si tu posais ton doigt sur mon épaule, ce serait comme une trânée de feu dans tes veines. La possession de la moindre place de mon corps t'emplira d'une joie plus véhémente que la conquête d'un empire. Avance tes lèvres..." La Tentation de Saint Antoine (The Temptation of Sain Anthony).

(Translation: Ah! Beautiful hermit! Beautiful hermit!... If you put your finger on my shoulder, it would be like a trail of fire in your veins. The possession of the lower part of my body will fill you with a joy more vehement than the conquest of an empire. Advance your arms...).

Saint Anthony, practicing his austerities in the Egyptian Thebaid, was troubled by hallucinations perpetrated by female devils attracted to his magnetic solitude. Apparitions of this order, with loins of irresistible attraction and breasts bursting to be touched, are known to all hermit-resorts of history. (From Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces.).

These were middle eastern looking women...

"Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight."

1 Peter 2:19, The Holy Bible, NIV

"Your breast is enough for my heart,
and my wings for your freedom.
What was sleeping above your soul will rise
out of my mouth to heaven.

In you is the illusion of each day.
You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers.
You undermine the horizon with your absence.
Eternally in flight like the wave.

I have said that you sang in the wind
like the pines and like the masts.
Like them you are tall and taciturn,
and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.

You gather things to you like an old road.
You are peopled with echoes and nostalgic voices.
I awoke and at times birds fled and migrated
that had been sleeping in your soul."

Your Breast Is Enough

Pablo Neruda - from Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair

Dedicated to the Woman I Love.

" It's the waves - the snow's caps turn to jig it now. They'll sake their tassels soon. Now would all the waves were women, then I'd go drown, and chassee with them evermore! There's naught so sweet on earth - heaven may not match it! - as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when the over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes."

Maltese Sailor - (Reclining and shaking his cap)

From Mody Dick by Herman Melville- "Midnight, Forecastle" - Chapter XL

"And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.

And he answered:

Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech.

The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle. Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us."

And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread. Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us."

The tired and the weary say, "Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit. her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow."

But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains, and with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions."

At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east." And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, "We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset."

In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."

And in the summer heat the reapers say, "We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."

All these things have you said of beauty,
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstacy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror."

"On Beauty", From "The Prophet" - by Gibran Khalil Gibran