Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/37

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Leaves of Grass.
29

27.I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out
of hopeful green stuff woven.

28.Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark, and say Whose?
 
29.Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced
babe of the vegetation.

30.Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and
narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them
the same, I receive them the same.

31.And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of
graves.

32.Tenderly will I use you, curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young
men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved
them,
It may be you are from old people, and from women,
and from offspring taken soon out of their
mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.

33.This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of
old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,

3*