1. ۱ON the beach at night alone,
2. ۲As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song,
3. ۳As I watch the bright stars shining—I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of
4. ۴ the future.
5. ۵
6. ۶A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all,
7. ۷All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets, asteroids,
8. ۸All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same,
9. ۹All distances of place, however wide,
10. ۱۰All distances of time—all inanimate forms,
11. ۱۱All Souls—all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
12. ۱۲All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes—the fishes, the brutes,
13. ۱۳All men and women—me also;
14. ۱۴All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages;
15. ۱۵All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any globe;
16. ۱۶All lives and deaths—all of the past, present, future;
17. ۱۷This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d, and shall forever span them, and
18. ۱۸ compactly hold them, and enclose them.