No More Learning

Think of loving and being loved;
I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such
things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon you.


3.

Think of the past;
I warn you that, in a little while, others will find their past in you and
your times.

The race is never separated--nor man nor woman escapes;
All is inextricable--things, spirits, nature, nations, you too--from
precedents you come.

Recall the ever-welcome defiers (the mothers precede them);
Recall the sages, poets, saviours, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth;
Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons--brother of slaves, felons,
idiots, and of insane and diseased persons.


4.

Think of the time when you was not yet born;
Think of times you stood at the side of the dying;
Think of the time when your own body will be dying.

Think of spiritual results:
Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects
pass into spiritual results.

Think of manhood, and you to be a man;
Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?

Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman;
The creation is womanhood;
Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best
womanhood?



_THE WATERS. _


The world below the brine.
Forests at the bottom of the sea--the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds--the thick tangle, the
openings, and the pink turf,
Different colours, pale grey and green, purple, white, and gold--the play
of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks--coral, gluten, grass, rushes--and the
aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly crawling close to
the bottom:
The sperm-whale at the surface, blowing air and spray, or disporting with
his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy
sea-leopard, and the sting-ray.
Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes--sight in those ocean-depths--
breathing that thick breathing air, as so many do.
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by
beings like us, who walk this sphere:
The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.



_TO THE STATES. _

TO IDENTIFY THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, OR EIGHTEENTH PRESIDENTIAD. [1]


Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?
What deepening twilight! Scum floating atop of the waters!
Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your
Arctic freezings! )
Are those really Congressmen? Are those the great Judges? Is that the
President?
Then I will sleep a while yet--for I see that these States sleep, for
reasons.
With gathering murk--with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly
awake, South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will
surely awake.