How the flukes splash!
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e at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,I take my place among you as much as among any,The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same,And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, preciselythe same. I do not know what is untried and afterward,But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail. Each who passes is consider’d, each who stops is consider’d, notsingle one can it fall. It cannot fall the young man who died and was buried,Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side,Nor the little child that peep’d in at the door, and then drew backand was never seen again,Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it withbitterness worse than gall,Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,Nor the numberless slaughter’d and wreck’d, nor the brutish koboocall’d the ordure of humanity,Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth,Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriadsthat inhabit them,Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known. 44It is time to explain myself--let us stand up. What is known I strip away,I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown. The clock indicates the moment--but what does eternity indicate? We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them. Births have brought us richness and variety,And other births will bring us richness and variety. I do not call one greater and one smaller,That which fills its period and place is equal to any. Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister?I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me,All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation,(What have I to do with lamentation?) I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser of things to be. My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount. Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there,I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
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