No More Learning

To think how eager we are in building our houses!
To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent!
I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or seventy or
eighty years at most,
I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.

Slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth--they never cease--
they are the burial lines;
He that was President was buried, and he that is now President shall surely
be buried.


4.

Gold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf--posh and ice in the river, half-
frozen mud in the streets, a grey discouraged sky overhead, the
short last daylight of Twelfth-month,
A hearse and stages--other vehicles give place--the funeral of an old
Broadway stage-driver, the cortege mostly drivers.

Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, the gate is
passed, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the
hearse uncloses,
The coffin is passed out, lowered, and settled, the whip is laid on the
coffin, the earth is swiftly shovelled in,
The mound above is flattened with the spades--silence,
A minute, no one moves or speaks--it is done,
He is decently put away--is there anything more?

He was a good fellow, free-mouthed, quick-tempered, not bad-looking, able
to take his own part, witty, sensitive to a slight, ready with life
or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate hearty, drank
hearty, had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward
the last, sickened, was helped by a contribution, died, aged forty-
one years--and that was his funeral.

Thumb extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap, wet-weather
clothes, whip carefully chosen, boss, spotter, starter, hostler,
somebody loafing on you, you loafing on somebody, headway, man
before and man behind, good day's work, bad day's work, pet stock,
mean stock, first out, last out, turning-in at night;
To think that these are so much and so nigh to other drivers--and he there
takes no interest in them!


5.

The markets, the government, the working-man's wages--to think what account
they are through our nights and days!
To think that other working-men will make just as great account of them--
yet we make little or no account!

The vulgar and the refined--what you call sin, and what you call goodness--
to think how wide a difference!
To think the difference will still continue to others, yet we lie beyond
the difference.

To think how much pleasure there is!
Have you pleasure from looking at the sky? have you pleasure from poems?
Do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or planning a
nomination and election? or with your wife and family?
Or with your mother and sisters? or in womanly housework? or the beautiful
maternal cares?
These also flow onward to others--you and I fly onward,
But in due time you and I shall take less interest in them.

Your farm, profits, crops,--to think how engrossed you are!
To think there will still be farms, profits, crops--yet for you, of what
avail?


6.

What will be will be well--for what is is well;
To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well.

The sky continues beautiful,
The pleasure of men with women shall never be sated, nor the pleasure of
women with men, nor the pleasure from poems;
The domestic joys, the daily housework or business, the building of
houses--these are not phantasms--they have weight, form, location;
Farms, profits, crops, markets, wages, government, are none of them
phantasms;
The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion,
The earth is not an echo--man and his life, and all the things of his life,
are well-considered.

You are not thrown to the winds--you gather certainly and safely around
yourself;
Yourself!