To think that the rivers will flow, and the snow fall, and fruits ripen,Īnd act upon others as upon us now-yet not act upon us! To think the thought of Death, merged in the thought of materials! The living look upon the corpse with their eye-sight,īut without eye-sight lingers a different living, and looks curiously It is palpable as the living are palpable.

The corpse stretches on the bed, and the living look upon it, The breath ceases, and the pulse of the heart ceases, The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying, The faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying, Medicines stand unused on the shelf-(the camphor-smell has The children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters The physician, after long putting off, gives the silent and terrible The soreness of lying so much in bed goes over, The dull nights go over, and the dull days also, Not a day passes-not a minute or second, without a corpse!

Not a day passes-not a minute or second, without an To think that we are now here, and bear our part! To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our Were flexible, real, alive! that everything was alive! To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing. Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing? Have you fear'd the future would be nothing to you? Have you guess'd you yourself would not continue? To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward! To think of time-of all that retrospection! They do not think whom they souse with spray. The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them, They do not know who puffs and declines with the pendant and bending arch, It descended trembling from their temples and ribs. The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long hair,Īn unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies, The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them. You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.ĭancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather, Where are you off to, lady? for I see you, Which of the young men does she like the best?Īh the homeliest of them is beautiful to her. She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window. She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank, Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome. Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,

Walt whitman song of myself nine days