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Books by Whitman

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17.

OF him I love day and night, I dreamed I heard he
was dead,

And I dreamed I went where they had buried him I
love—but he was not in that place,

And I dreamed I wandered, 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 Manna-
hatta, 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 dreamed I will henceforth tell to every
person and age,

And I stand henceforth bound to what I dreamed;

And now I am willing to disregard burial-places, and
dispense with them,

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And if the memorials of the dead were put up indif-
ferently 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 rendered to powder, and poured
in the sea, I shall be satisfied,

Or if it be distributed to the winds, I shall be sat-
isfied.

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