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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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NIGHT ON THE PRAIRIES.
The supper is over, the fire on the ground burns low, |
The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets; |
I walk by myself—I stand and look at the stars, which I think now
I never realized before.
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Now I absorb immortality and peace, |
I admire death and test propositions. |
How plenteous! how spiritual! how resumé! |
The same old man and soul—the same old aspirations, and the
same content.
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I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day
exhibited,
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I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless
around me myriads of other globes.
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Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will
measure myself by them,
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And now touch'd with the lives of other globes arrived as far
along as those of the earth,
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Or waiting to arrive, or pass'd on farther than those of the earth, |
I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life, |
Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive. |
O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot, |
I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death. |
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