Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/219

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Leaves of Grass.
211
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseased corpses,
It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews, with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.



5.

1. All day I have walked the city, and talked with my friends, and thought of prudence,

Of time, space, reality—of such as these, and abreast with them, prudence.

2. After all, the last explanation remains to be made about prudence,

Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that suits immortality.

3. The Soul is of itself,

All verges to it—all has reference to what ensues,
All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence,
Not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day, month, any part of the direct life-time, or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect life-time.