The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the daughter, The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is
    inarm’d by friend,
The scholar kisses the teacher and the teacher kisses the scholar,
    the wrong ’d made right,
The call of the slave is one with the master’s call, and the master
    salutes the slave,
The felon steps forth from the prison, the insane becomes sane, the
    suffering of sick persons is reliev’d,
The sweatings and fevers stop, the throat that was unsound is sound,
    the lungs of the consumptive are resumed, the poor distress’d
    head is free,
The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother
    than ever,
Stiflings and passages open, the paralyzed become supple, The swell’d and convuls’d and congested awake to themselves in condition, They pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the
    night, and awake.

I too pass from the night,
I stay a while away O night, but I return to you again and love you.

Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you? 
I am not afraid, I have been well brought forward by you,
I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so long,
I know not how I came of you and I know not where I go with you, but
    I know I came well and shall go well.

I will stop only a time with the night, and rise betimes,
I will duly pass the day O my mother, and duly return to you.

} Transpositions

Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever
    bawling—­let an idiot or insane person appear on each of the stands;
Let judges and criminals be transposed—­let the prison-keepers be
    put in prison—­let those that were prisoners take the keys;
Let them that distrust birth and death lead the rest.

[Book XXIX]

} To Think of Time

1 To think of time—­of all that retrospection, To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward.

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue? 
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles? 
Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?

Is to-day nothing? is the beginningless past nothing? 
If the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing.

To think that the sun rose in the east—­that men and women were
    flexible, real, alive—­that every thing was alive,
To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part,
To think that we are now here and bear our part.

2 Not a day passes, not a minute or second without an accouchement, Not a day passes, not a minute or second without a corpse.