Leaves of Grass (1860)

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¹ NIGHT on the Prairies;

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 aspi-
rations, 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 tumbled
upon 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, touched with the lives of other globes,
arrived as far along as those of the earth,

Or waiting to arrive, or passed on farther than those
of the earth,

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

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

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

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

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