Afar they stand—yet near to me they stand,
Some with oval countenances, learned and calm,
Some naked and savage—Some like huge collections of insects,
Some in tents—herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,
Some prowling through woods—Some living peaceably on farms, labouring,
reaping, filling barns,
Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories, libraries,
shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.
Are those billions of men really gone?
Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?
Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?
Did they achieve nothing for good, for themselves?
3.
I believe, of all those billions of men and women that filled the unnamed lands, every one exists this hour, here or elsewhere, invisible to us, in exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinned, in life.
I believe that was not the end of those nations, or any person of them, any
more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me;
Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products, games,
wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets, I suspect
their results curiously await in the yet unseen world—counterparts
of what accrued to them in the seen world;
I suspect I shall meet them there,
I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands.
SIMILITUDE.
1.
On the beach at night alone,
As the old Mother sways her to and fro, singing her savage and husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining—I think a thought of the clef of the
universes, and of the future.
2.
A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets,
asteroids,
All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same,
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 men and women—me also;
All nations, colours, barbarisms, civilisations, 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 spanned, and shall for ever
span them, and compactly hold them.