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Leaves of Grass (1871-72)
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OF HIM I LOVE DAY AND NIGHT.
OF him I love day and night, I dream'd I heard he was
dead;
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And I dream'd I went where they had buried him I
love—but he was not in that place;
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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;)
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The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the
Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta,
were as full of the dead as of the living,
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And fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of the
living;
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—And what I dream'd I will henceforth tell to every
person and age,
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And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream'd; |
And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and
dispense with them;
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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;
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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;
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Or if it be distributed to the winds, I shall be satisfied. |
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