Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

201. Of Him I Love Day and Night

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;

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 indifferently 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.