Poemet

per.00073.001per.00073.001_cropped [For the Saturday Press.]

Poemet.¹

Of him I love day and night, I dreamed I heard he was 
  dead, And I dreamed I went where they had buried him I 
  love—But he was not in that place, And I dreamed I wandered, searching among burial- 
  places, to find him, 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, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, Boston, 
  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 dreamed I will henceforth tell to every 
  person and age, And I stand henceforth bound to what I dreamed; And now I am willing to disregard burial-places, and 
  dispense with them, And if the memorials of the dead were put 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 rendered to powder and poured in 
  the sea, I shall be satisfied, Or if it be distributed to the winds, I shall be satisfied. WALT WHITMAN.

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Notes

1. This poem later appeared as "Calamus No. 17," Leaves of Grass (1860); as "Of Him I Love Day and Night," Leaves of Grass (1867); and, with slight changes in the text, in "Passage to India," Leaves of Grass (1871-72). [back]