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. The dull nights go over and the dull days also, The soreness of lying so much in bed goes over, The physician after long putting off gives the silent and terrible look for an answer, The children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters are sent for, Medicines stand unused on the shelf, (the camphor-smell has long pervaded the rooms,) The faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying, The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying, The breath ceases and the pulse of the heart ceases, The corpse stretches on the bed and the living look upon it, It is palpable as the living are palpable. The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight, But without eyesight lingers a different living and looks curiously on the corpse. 3 To think the thought of death merged in the thought of materials, To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking great interest in them, and we taking no interest in them. To think how eager we are in building our houses, To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent. (I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or seventy or eighty years at most, I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.)