undrape

Whitman opens his first poem in 1855 virtually in the buff: "I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,/I am mad for it to be in contact with me." (5) He invites the reader to join him: "Undrape [...] I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no" (LG 1855, 17).

/ Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?" and "I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy, / To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can / stand." Or this: "Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded, / I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no, / And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot / be shaken away." Even the narrator's self-description - "Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding" - -calls to mind the current commander-in-chief.

Aroused by the sights and sounds of boys stirring a river "boister-ous-ly beautiful" (giving that word a bit of pederastic distance), Hopkins' listless stranger, warmly dressed in "woolwoven wear," is motivated to undrape and bathe alone in "a pool neighbouring," a pool hidden from the boys' view by a canopy of wychelms, beaches, ashes, sycamores, hornbeams, and hazels.

Finally, the narrator undrapes the coffin only to discover that there is no cadaver underneath.

She comes into the studio, undrapes herself, undrapes me and then stands staring at us both.