Merging.
So that if the new Democracy is to be based on the love of comrades, it will be based on death too. It will slip so soon into death.
The last merging. The last Democracy. The last love. The love of comrades.
Fatality. And fatality.
Whitman would not have been the great poet he is if he had not taken the last steps and looked over into death. Death, the last merging, that was the goal of his manhood.
To the mergers, there remains the brief love of comrades, and then Death.
"Whereto answering, the sea
Delaying not, hurrying not
Whispered me through the night, very plainly before
daybreak,
Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death.
And again death, death, death, death.
Hissing melodions, neither like the bird nor like my
arous'd child's heart,
But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet,
Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me
softly all over,
Death, death, death, death, death——"
Whitman is a very great poet, of the end of life. A very great post mortem poet, of the transitions of the soul as it loses its integrity. The poet of the soul's last shout and shriek, on the confines of death. Après moi le déluge.
But we have all got to die, and disintegrate.
We have got to die in life, too, and disintegrate while we live.