Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892. Leaves of Grass (1872)
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(26) A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with
full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it
is, any more than he.
(27) I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of
hopeful green stuff woven.
(28) Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that
we may see and remark, and say, Whose?
(29) Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced
babe of the vegetation.
(30) Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic;
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and nar-
row zones,
Growing among black folks as among white;
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.
(31) And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of
graves.
(32) Tenderly will I use you, curling grass;
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young
men;
It may be if I had known them I would have loved
them;
It may be you are from old people and from women,
and from offspring taken soon out of their
mothers' laps;
And here you are the mothers' laps;
(33) This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of
old mothers;
Darker than the colourless beards of old men;
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
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(34) O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of
mouths for nothing.
(35) I wish I could translate the hints about the dead
young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the
offspring taken soon out of their laps.
(36) What do you think has become of the young and
old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and
children?
(37) They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death;
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not
wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
(38) All goes onward and outward -- nothing collapses;
And to die is different from what any one supposed,
and luckier.