Day and night are for you, me, all,
And what is yet untried and afterward is for you,
me, all, precisely the same.
293.I do not know what is untried and afterward,
But I know it is sure, alive, sufficient.
294.Each who passes is considered—Each who stops is
considered—Not a single one can it fail.
295.It cannot fail the young man who died and was
buried,
Nor the young woman who died and was put by his
side,
Nor the little child that peeped in at the door,
and then drew back, and was never seen again,
Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and
feels it with bitterness worse than gall,
Nor him in the poor-house, tubercled by rum and
the bad disorder,
Nor the numberless slaughtered and wrecked—nor
the brutish koboo called the ordure of humanity,
Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for
food to slip in,
Nor anything in the earth, or down in the oldest
graves of the earth,
Nor anything in the myriads of spheres—nor one of
the myriads of myriads that inhabit them,
Nor the present—nor the least wisp that is known.
296.It is time to explain myself—Let us stand up.
297.What is known I strip away,
I launch all men and women forward with me into
the Unknown.
Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/100
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Leaves of Grass.