I look where the ship helplessly heads end on, I hear the burst as she strikes,
Women gather’d together on deck, pale, heroic,
They gripped close with death there,
Waiting the moment that draws so close—O the moment!
I hear the howls of dismay, a huge sob,
A few bubbles—the white foam spirting up—and then the women gone.

Are those women indeed gone?
Are souls drown’d and destroy’d so?
Is only matter triumphant?

No—Death has its tomorrow,
Distant and dead resuscitate,
We must, will, can’t help, living again,
Death can’t have the last word.
Pensive and faltering, the words the dead I write,
For living are the dead,
Haply the only living, only real, and I the apparition, I the spectre.

So if you are to die, I bring no dirge for it or thee,
I bring a glad triumphal sonnet,
I do not commiserate, there is nothing to be commiserated,
I congratulate you,
The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious,
Now ending well in death the splendid fever of thy deeds,
You yourself will surely escape.

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue?
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?
How can the real body, not visible, ever die and be buried?
Your real body and any man’s or woman’s real body,
Item for item it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners and pass to fitting spheres.

I absolve you from all except yourself, spiritual, bodily—that is eternal,
I do not know your destination, but I know it is real and perfect,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.

I believe in immortality, and by that I mean identity—the survival of the personal soul—your survival, my survival. Even to this identity of yours or mine, the far more permanent is yet unseen, yet to come, like a long train of noble corridors and infinite halls and superb endless chambers, yet awaiting us. Yes, indeed, in our Father’s house are many mansions.

Mortal life is most important with reference to the immortal,
The purpose and essence of the known life, the transient, is to form and decide identity for the unknown life, the permanent,
The unknown, the spiritual, the only permanently real,
Which, as the ocean waits for and receives the rivers, waits for us each and all.

Life, life is the tillage, and death is the harvest according,
Somehow the entrance upon by far the greatest part of existence,
And something that life is at least as much for, as it is for itself—
What we thought death, is but life brought to a firmer parturition. 

What would this life be without immortality?
It would be as a locomotive, the greatest triumph of modern science, with no train to draw after it.
To me a locomotive is proof of the advance of humanity for hundreds of thousands of year. But what for? If there is no hereafter, what for? The locomotive is not for itself but for a purpose. The final and ultimate purpose of everything is completed, as it were, only by the unknown futurity of immortality.

What is mortality but an exercise? with reference to results beyond—that pervading invisible fact, 
So large a part, (is it not the largest part?) of life here, combining the rest,
And furnishing, for person or state, the only permanent and unitary meaning to all, consistently with the dignity of the universe.

I am not prepared to admit fraud in the scheme of the universe,
Yet without immortality all would be sham and sport of the most tragic nature.
If all came but to ashes of dung, if maggots and rats ended us,
Then alarum! for we are betray’d,
Then indeed suspicion of death.
Do you suspect death? if I were to suspect death I should die now,
Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation?

Pleasantly and well-suited I walk,
Whither I walk I cannot define,
I do not know what follows the death of my body,
I do not know what is waiting for me to be,
But I know it is good,
The past and the present indicate that it is good,
The whole universe indicates that it is good,
I know well that whatever it is, it is best for me,
I know that I shall be in great form and nature.

As to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me,
And thou O grave, wait long and long,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass,
I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night,
I know I am deathless,
I know well that what is really me shall live just as much as before.

Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as everyone is immortal,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)
I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or anyone else—
Eternity has no time for death.

Lo! the pulsations in all matter, all spirit, throbbing forever,
The eternal beats, eternal systole and diastole of life in things,
Wherefrom I feel and know that death is not the ending, as was thought,
But rather the real beginning.
I remember what Epictetus said: What is good enough for the universe is good enough for me!
Immortality for the universe, immortality is good enough for me!

I swear I think now that everything without exception has an eternal soul!
The trees have, rooted in the ground! the weeds of the sea have! the animals!
I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!
The exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and the cohering is for it!
And all preparation is for it—and identity is for it—and life and materials are altogether for it!

I know I have arrived at this result more by what may be called feeling than formal reason;
Of course it is not certain.
But I believe it—yes, I know it,
I do not argue, I cannot prove it to you or anyone, but I know it is so—
Immortality, not as an intellection but as a pervading instinct.

Words are difficult, even impossible. No doubt anyone will recall ballads or songs or hymns, maybe instrumental performances, that have arous’d so curiously, yet definitely, the thought of death, the mystic, the after-realm—as no statement or sermon could—and brought it hovering near.

I have sung the songs of life and death,
And the songs of birth, and shown that there are many births.
O the soul’s procession, passing through various experiences, perpetual transfers and promotions,
From stage to stage, from orb to orb, from life to life,
Continuous the journey, intimate the procession continuing forever,
Most of it through regions and experiences unknown.

Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,
Ages and ages, returning at intervals,
Births have brought us richness and variety,
And other births will bring us richness and variety;
The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves.

No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before,
My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,
Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the moment of death.

The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again to the garden the world anew ascending,
Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me,
I troop forth replenish’d with supreme power,
I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras ascending,
While others doubtless await me,
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years—
Wherever I go I believe I shall often return,
I believe I shall walk and walk among men and women.

Darest thou now O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region?
At the last, tenderly,
Set ope the doors O soul,
Let me glide noiselessly forth,
Tenderly—be not impatient,
(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,
Strong is your hold O love.)

When the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, time and space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us,
Then we burst forth, we float,
In time and space O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul. 

O to glide with thee O soul—the immortal ship! ship aboard the ship!
Often enough hast thou adventur’d o’er the seas,
Cautiously cruising, studying the charts,
Duly again to port and hawser’s tie returning.
But now obey thy cherish’d secret wish—
Sail out for good;
Embrace thy friends, leave all in order,
Depart, depart from solid earth,
Depart upon thy endless cruise.

The long, long anchorage we leave,
Put on the old ship all her power today!
Now finalè to the shore, land and life finalè and farewell,
Farewell ye neighboring waters.

The ship is clear at last, she leaps!
She swiftly courses from the shore,
Now voyager depart—I depart from materials,
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead,
Pleas’d to my soul at death I cry,
Joy, shipmate, joy! 

I’m going away, I know not where,
Or to what fortune.
As I wend to the shores I know not,
I will not call it our concluding voyage,
But outset and sure entrance to the truest, best, maturest,
The real life, full of exultation.

Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land,
I know it not O soul, nor dost thou,
All waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land,
New scenes untellable—
Joy, shipmate, joy.

Flaunt out O sea your separate flags of nations!
But do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of man one flag above all the rest,
A pennant universal, subtly waving all time, o’er all seas, all ships,
A spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death.

NEXT: SELF AND UNIVERSE

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).