< Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu
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172
Leaves of Grass.
:Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or me,
Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me.

2. Anticipate when the thirty or fifty millions, are to become the hundred, or two hundred millions, of equal freemen and freewomen, amicably joined.

3. Recall ages—One age is but a part—ages are but a part;

Recall the angers, bickerings, delusions, superstitions, of the idea of caste,
Recall the bloody cruelties and crimes.

4. Anticipate the best women;

I say an unnumbered new race of hardy and well-defined women are to spread through all These States,
I say a girl fit for These States must be free, capable, dauntless, just the same as a boy.

5. Anticipate your own life—retract with merciless power,

Shirk nothing—retract in time—Do you see those errors, diseases, weaknesses, lies, thefts?
Do you see that lost character?—Do you see decay, consumption, rum-drinking, dropsy, fever, mortal cancer or inflammation?
Do you see death, and the approach of death?

6. Think of the Soul;

I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul somehow to live in other spheres,
I do not know how, but I know it is so.
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