Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City

Once I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for future

use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,

Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met

there who detain'd me for love of me,

Day by day and night by night we were together - all else has long

been forgotten by me,

I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,

Again we wander, we love, we separate again,

Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,

I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

- Walt Whitman

[photo by Philip Newton]