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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.
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Comments
I really think Whitman has really captured the voyage of dealing with death in this poem. Having recently lost someone very dear to me, this poem has really helped by showing that the act of death is not where are focus should lie. One can not look forever at the past otherwise you wouldnt be able to see where you were going.
Lyns from United Kingdom