Now for the day and night themselves,
O day and night, passage to you,
Great are the day and night,
Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above.

Ever the upward and downward sun, 
Alternate ebb and flow the days and nights,
The curious rapid silent change of the light and shade,
The shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping, and the sunlit part on the other side.

The day and night do not fail,
Embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and sixty-five resistlessly round the sun,
Day full-blown and splendid, day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter,
Embracing all, soothing, supporting, follow close three hundred and sixty-five offsets of the first, sure and necessary as they,
The night with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.

Sounds of the day and night,
Warblings under the sun, usher’d as now, or at noon, or setting—
The mockingbird of the wilds, singing all the forenoon, singing through the moonlit night;
The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,
With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset;
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests.

The morning has its words and the evening has its words.
How much there is in the word light!
The sun—life—action—love;
How vast, surrounding, falling, sleepy, noiseless, is the word night!
It hugs with unfelt yet living arms.

The scent around lanes mornings and evenings,
There is a scent to everything, even the snow, if you can only detect it,
No two places, any two hours, anywhere, exactly alike—
How different the odor of noon from midnight.

Seen at hand or seen at a distance,
Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day,
Duly approach and pass with their companions or a companion,
Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances of those who are with them,
From the countenances of children or women or the manly countenance,
From the open countenances of animals or from inanimate things,
From our countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning them,
Every day in public appearing without fail, but never twice with the same companions.

The day and the night are for you and me and all. How much (perhaps all) the value of a thing—your joy, satisfaction, with it—consists in having it just at the right time; it may be a trifle but it is opportune. A little something at the right time is better than much and running over at the wrong time.

These are the thoughts that have come to me,
Some have come by night, and some by day,
Every hour has given me copious pictures;
Who shall write, who tell, who paint, the lessons of one mere day and night?
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
I tread day and night such roads,
If I were younger and well, I should lay out a poem, a whole book about them.

Day come white, or night come black,
I shall venerate hours and days and think them immeasurable hereafter,
Celebrate the beauty of day, with all its splendor,
Then night with its beauty,
(Rather leaning to the celebration of the superiority of the night.)

I will confront these shows of the day and night,
Attitude adjusted to the sun by day and the stars by night,
Absorbing the days and nights all I can.
I will know if I am to be less than they,
I will see if I am to be less generous than they,
I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they,
I will see if I am not as majestic as they.

NEXT: MORNING

The texts in this anthology should NOT be cited as direct quotations from Whitman. If you want to quote from this site for something you are writing or posting, please read this first (click here).