Of him I love day and night, I dreamed I heard he was dead;
And I dreamed I went where they had buried him I love--but he was not in
that place;
And I dreamed I wandered, searching among burial-places, to find him;
And I found that every place was a burial-place;
The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now;)
The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago, Boston,
Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead as of the living,
And fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of the living.
--And what I dreamed I will henceforth tell to every person and age,
And I stand henceforth bound to what I dreamed;
And now I am willing to disregard burial-places, and dispense with them;
And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere, even
in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied;
And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly rendered
to powder, and poured in the sea, I shall be satisfied;
Or if it be distributed to the winds, I shall be satisfied.
