The smallest sprout shows there really is no death, and if ever there was it led forward life

A child said what is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is anymore than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or i guess it is the handkerchif of the lord,

a scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,

Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that

we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation....

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,

It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,

It may be if I had known them I would have loved them.

It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,

And here you are the mother's laps....

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,

The smallest sprout shows there really is no death,

And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,

And ceas'd the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. 

Walt Whitman