a soul,
Unclaim’d, avoided house—­take one breath from my tremulous lips,
Take one tear dropt aside as I go for thought of you,
Dead house of love—­house of madness and sin, crumbled, crush’d,
House of life, erewhile talking and laughing—­but ah, poor house,
    dead even then,
Months, years, an echoing, garnish’d house—­but dead, dead, dead.

} This Compost

1
Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.

O how can it be that the ground itself does 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 distemper’d corpses within you? 
Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses? 
Those 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 deceiv’d,
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.

     2
Behold this compost! behold it well! 
Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person—­yet behold!  The grass of spring 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, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on
    their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the
    colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in
    the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata
    of sour dead.

What chemistry! 
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which
    is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited
    themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that
    melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once
    catching disease.