Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

202. Assurances

I NEED no assurances—I am a man who is preoccupied, of his own Soul;

I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant of—calm and actual faces;

I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the world;

I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless—in vain I try to think how limitless;

I do not doubt that the orbs, and the systems of orbs, play their swift sports through the air on purpose—and that I shall one day be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they;

I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on, millions of years;

I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors—and that the eye-sight has another eye-sight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice;

I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for—and that the deaths of young women, and the deaths of little children, are provided for;

(Did you think Life was so well provided for—and Death, the purport of all Life, is not well provided for?)

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of them—no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points;

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen, any where, at any time, is provided for, in the inherences of things;

I do not think Life provides for all, and for Time and Space—but I believe Heavenly Death provides for all.