Three Calamus Songs

Of him I love day and night I dream'd I heard he was dead,
And I dream'd I went where they had buried him I love, but he was not in that place,
And I dream'd I wander'd searching among burial-places to find him,
And I found that every place was a burial place;
The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now),
The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement,
the Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, the Manahatta, were as full of the dead as of the living,
And fuller, 0 vastly fuller of the dead than of the living;
And what I dream'd I will henceforth tell to every person and age,
And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream'd,
And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with them,
And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere,
even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied,
And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse,
be duly render'd to powder and pour'd in the sea, I shall be satisfied.

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches;
Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself;
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves, standing alone there, 
  without its friend ...  near -- for I knew I could not;
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, 
  and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away -- and I have placed it in sight in my room;
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them;)
Yet it remains to me a curious token -- it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana,
  solitary, in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a lover, near,
I know very well I could not.

Be composed - be at ease with me - I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature,
Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you,
   do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.

My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you make preparation
  to be worthy to meet me,

And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.

Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me.