11.What is it, then, between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years
between us?
12.Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and
place avails not.
13.I too lived, (I was of old Brooklyn,)
I too walked the streets of Manhattan Island, and
bathed in the waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within
me,
In the day, among crowds of people, sometimes they
came upon me,
In my walks home late at night, or as I lay in my
bed, they came upon me.
14.I too had been struck from the float forever held in
solution,
I too had received identity by my body,
That I was, I knew was of my body—and what I
should be, I knew I should be of my body.
15.It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not
in reality meagre? would not people laugh
at me?
16.It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/391
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Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.
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