a poem by
Walt Whitman:
As thy
portals also death,
Entering thy sovereign, dim,
illimitable grounds,
To memories of my mother, devine being,
eternity
To her, buried and gone, yet
buried not, gone not from me,
(I see again the calm
benignant face fresh and beautiful still,
I sit by the form in the coffin;
I kiss and kiss
convulsively again the sweet old line, the cheeks, the closed eyes in the coffin;)
To her, the
ideal women, practical, spiritual, of all earth, life, love
to me the best.
I grieve a
monumental line, before I go, amid these songs
And set a
tombstone here.