Leaves of Grass · Chapter
Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals explained
The narrator proclaims his immortal, undestroyed return across ages, celebrating the phallic and lusty origins of life.
What happens
The narrator proclaims his immortal, undestroyed return across ages, celebrating the phallic and lusty origins of life. He identifies as the singer of Adamic songs, calling through the new garden of the West and its great cities, offering himself and his songs bathed in sex as the generative offspring of his loins.
Themes in this chapter
Sexuality and the Body
The chapter explicitly celebrates phallic, lusty, and sexual energy as central to the narrator's identity and creative output.
Death and Immortality
The narrator describes himself as 'undestroy'd, wandering immortal,' linking the cycle of ages to an eternal return.
Characters to notice
Key passages
“Ages and ages returning at intervals, Undestroy'd, wandering immortal, Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet, I, chanter of Adamic songs”
Through endless cycles of time, I come back again and again, never destroyed, forever wandering, full of life and sexual vigor, with the powerful, sweet loins of the first man—I, the singer of songs like Adam's.
The narrator asserts his eternal, sexualized return as a primal singer.
“Bathing myself, bathing my songs in Sex, Offspring of my loins.”
I immerse both myself and my poetry in sexuality, as if they are children born from my own body.
Sex is presented as the creative, generative source of both the self and art.