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Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.
218. On the Beach at Night, Alone
| ON the beach at night alone, | | | As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song, | | | As I watch the bright stars shining—I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of the future. | | | | | A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all, | | | All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets, asteroids, | 5 | | All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same, | | | All distances of place, however wide, | | | All distances of time—all inanimate forms, | | | All Souls—all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, | | | All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes—the fishes, the brutes, | 10 | | All men and women—me also; | | | All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages; | | | All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any globe; | | | All lives and deaths—all of the past, present, future; | | | This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d, and shall forever span them, and compactly hold them, and enclose them. | 15 |
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