Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

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OF him I love day and night, I dream'd I heard he was
dead;

And I dream'd I went where they had buried him I
love—but he was not in that place;

And I dream'd I wander'd searching among burial-
places to find him;

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And I found that every place was a burial-place;

The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this
house is now;)

The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the
Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta,
were as full of the dead as of the living,

And fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of the
living;

—And what I dream'd I will henceforth tell to every
person and age,

And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream'd;

And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and
dispense with them;

And if the memorials of the dead were put up indiffer-
ently everywhere, even in the room where I eat
or sleep, I should be satisfied;

And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse,
be duly render'd to powder, and pour'd in the
sea, I shall be satisfied;

Or if it be distributed to the winds, I shall be satisfied.

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