Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/217

Rh 2. O Earth!
 * O how can the ground of you not sicken?
 * How can you be alive, you growths of spring?
 * How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
 * Are they not continually putting distempered corpses in you?
 * Is not every continent worked over and over with sour dead?

3. Where have you disposed of those carcasses of the drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
 * Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat ?
 * I do not see any of it upon you to-day—or perhaps I am deceived,
 * I will run a furrow with my plough—I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it up underneath,
 * I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

4. Behold!
 * This is the compost of billions of premature corpses,
 * Perhaps every mite has once formed part of a sick person—Yet behold!
 * The grass covers the prairies,
 * The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
 * The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
 * The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
 * The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
 * The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,