O Living Always—Always Dying!
by Walt Whitman
· 1867
Published 01/07/1867
O LIVING always—always dying!
O the burials of me, past and present!
O me, while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperi-ousimperious as ever!
O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not
—I am content;)
O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and look at, where I cast them!
To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind!