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Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
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OUTLINES FOR A TOMB.
( G. P., Buried 1870. )
WHAT may we chant, O thou within this tomb? |
What tablets, outlines, hang for thee, O millionnaire? |
The life thou lived'st we know not, |
But that thou walk'dst thy years in barter, 'mid the haunts of
brokers,
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Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory. |
With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder'd, |
Turning from all the samples, monuments of heroes. |
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While through the interior vistas, |
Noiseless uprose, phantasmic, (as by night Auroras of the north,) |
Lambent tableaus, prophetic, bodiless scenes, |
In one, among the city streets a laborer's home appear'd, |
After his day's work done, cleanly, sweet-air'd, the gaslight burning, |
The carpet swept and a fire in the cheerful stove. |
In one, the sacred parturition scene, |
A happy painless mother birth'd a perfect child. |
In one, at a bounteous morning meal, |
Sat peaceful parents with contented sons. |
In one, by twos and threes, young people, |
Hundreds concentring, walk'd the paths and streets and roads, |
Toward a tall-domed school. |
Grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughter's daughter, sat, |
In one, along a suite of noble rooms, |
'Mid plenteous books and journals, paintings on the walls, fine
statuettes,
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Were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics young and old, |
All, all the shows of laboring life, |
City and country, women's, men's and children's, |
Their wants provided for, hued in the sun and tinged for once
with joy,
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Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-
room,
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Labor and toil, the bath, gymnasium, playground, library, college, |
The student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught, |
The sick cared for, the shoeless shod, the orphan father'd and
mother'd,
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The hungry fed, the houseless housed; |
(The intentions perfect and divine, |
The workings, details, haply human.) |
From thee such scenes, thou stintless, lavish giver, |
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Tallying the gifts of earth, large as the earth, |
Thy name an earth, with mountains, fields and tides. |
Nor by your streams alone, you rivers, |
By you, your banks Connecticut, |
By you and all your teeming life old Thames, |
By you Potomac laving the ground Washington trod, by you
Patapsco,
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You Hudson, you endless Mississippi—nor you alone, |
But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory. |
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