There is no twisted thing of my begetting To keep my shame alive: and that's the most That I've to pride myself upon. But, God, I'm proud, ay, proud as Lucifer, of that. Think what it means, with all the urge and sting, When such a lust of life runs in the veins. You, with your six sons, and your one missed hoop, Put that thought in your pipe and smoke it. Well, And how d'you like the flavour? Something bitter? And burns the tongue a trifle? That's the brand That I must smoke while I've the breath to puff. (Pause.) I've always worshipped the body, all my life-- The body, quick with the perfect health which is beauty, Lively, lissom, alert, and taking its way Through the world with the easy gait of the early gods. The only moments I've lived my life to the full And that live again in remembrance unfaded are those When I've seen life compact in some perfect body, The living God made manifest in man: A diver in the Mediterranean, resting, With sleeked black hair, and glistening salt-tanned skin, Gripping the quivering gunwale with tense hands, His torso lifted out of the peacock sea, Like Neptune, carved in amber, come to life: A stark Egyptian on the Nile's edge poised Like a bronze Osiris against the lush, rank green: A fisherman dancing reels, on New Year's Eve, In a hall of shadowy rafters and flickering lights, At St Abbs on the Berwickshire coast, to the skirl of the pipes, The lift of the wave in his heels, the sea in his veins: A Cherokee Indian, as though he were one with his horse, His coppery shoulders agleam, his feathers aflame With the last of the sun, descending a gulch in Alaska; A brawny Cleveland puddler, stripped to the loins, On the cauldron's brink, stirring the molten iron In the white-hot glow, a man of white-hot metal: A Cornish ploughboy driving an easy share Through the grey, light soil of a headland, against a sea Of sapphire, gay in his new white corduroys, Blue-eyed, dark-haired, and whistling a careless tune: Jack Johnson, stripped for the ring, in his swarthy pride Of sleek and rippling muscle ... Merry Andrew: Jack's the boy! Ay, he's the proper figure of a man. But he'll grow fat and flabby and scant of breath. He'll miss his hoop some day. Gentleman John: