Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass - on the beach at night alone

ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE.

ON the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her

husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought

of the clef of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons,

planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so

different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the

fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colours, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this

globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and

enclose them.