In “A Respectable Woman,” are the lines of poetry that Gouvernail recites his own or is he quoting someone else?
He is quoting Walt Whitman—from section 21 of “Song of Myself” in the 1892 edition of Leaves of Grass. The remaining lines of the apostrophe to the night read: “Press close bare-bosomed night—press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds—night of the large few stars! Still nodding night—mad naked summer night.
