1. FLOOD-TIDE below me! I watch you, face to face;

Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.

2. Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me!

On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,

And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

3. The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all hours of the day,

The simple, compact, well-joined scheme — myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated, yet part of the scheme,

The similitudes of the past, and those of the future,

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings — on the walk in the street, and the passage over the river,

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