"What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

12. Whatever it is, it avails not — distance avails not, and place avails not.

13. I too lived, (I was of old Brooklyn,)
I too walked the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me.
In the day, among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me.
In my walks home late at night, or as I lay in my bed, they came upon me.

14. I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
I too had received identity by my body.
That I was, I knew was of my body — and what I should be, I knew I should be of my body.

15. It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall.
The dark threw patches down upon me also.
The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious.
My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre? would not people laugh at me?

16. It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil,