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Walt Whitman (1819-1892) closes his Song of Myself (1881) as follows . . .
I bequeath myself
to the dirt
to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again
look for me under your bootsoles.
You will hardly know
who I am
or what I mean,
But I shall be
good health to you
nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first
keep encouraged,
Missing me one place
search another,
I stop some where
waiting for you.
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All America lies at the end of the wilderness road,
and our past is not a dead past,
but still lives in us.
Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves,
the wild outside.
We live in the civilization they created,
but within us the wilderness still lingers.
What they dreamed, we live,
and what they lived, we dream.
T.K. Whipple (1890-1939) . . .
as quoted by Mike Brown in the Rockdale Reporter . . .
and as quoted by Larry McMurtry
in his epigraph to Lonesome Dove
