No More Learning

Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing?
If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing.

To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women were flexible,
real, alive! that everything was alive!
To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part!
To think that we are now here, and bear our part!


2.

Not a day passes--not a minute or second, without an accouchement!
Not a day passes-not a minute or second, without a corpse!

The dull nights go over, and the dull days also,
The soreness of lying so much in bed goes over,
The physician, after long putting off, gives the silent and terrible look
for an answer,
The children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters are
sent for;
Medicines stand unused on the shelf--(the camphor-smell has long pervaded
the rooms,)
The faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying,
The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying,
The breath ceases, and the pulse of the heart ceases,
The corpse stretches on the bed, and the living look upon it,
It is palpable as the living are palpable.

The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight,
But without eyesight lingers a different living, and looks curiously on the
corpse.


3.

To think that the rivers will flow, and the snow fall, and the fruits
ripen, and act upon others as upon us now--yet not act upon us!
To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking great
interest in them--and we taking--no interest in them!

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!