Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

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¹ NIGHT on the prairies;

The supper is over—the fire on the ground burns
low;

The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets;

I walk by myself—I stand and look at the stars,
which I think now I never realized before.

² Now I absorb immortality and peace,

I admire death, and test propositions.

³ How plenteous! How spiritual! How resumé!

The same Old Man and Soul—the same old aspira-
tions, and the same content.

⁴ I was thinking the day most splendid, till I saw
what the not-day exhibited,

I was thinking this globe enough, till there sprang
out so noiseless around me myriads of other
globes.

⁵ Now, while the great thoughts of space and eternity
fill me, I will measure myself by them;

And now, touch'd with the lives of other globes, ar-
rived as far along as those of the earth,

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Or waiting to arrive, or pass'd on farther than those
of the earth,

I henceforth no more ignore them, than I ignore my
own life,

Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or
waiting to arrive.

⁶ O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me—as
the day cannot,

I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by
death.

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