I SAW in Louisiana a live-oak growing,

All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the 
branches;

Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous 
leaves of dark green,

And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think 
of myself;

But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves, 
standing alone there, without its friend, its 
lover near—for I knew I could not;

And I broke off a twig with a certain number of 
leaves upon it, and twined around it a little 
moss,

And brought it away—and I have placed it in sight in 
my room;

It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear 
friends,

(For I believe lately I think of little else than of 
them;)

Yet it remains to me a curious token—it makes me 
think of manly love;

—For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there 
in Louisiana, solitary, in a wide flat space,

Uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a 
lover, near,

I know very well I could not.

I NEED no assurances—I am a man who is pre-
occupied, of his own Soul;

I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside 
the hands and face I am cognizant of, are now 
looking faces I am not cognizant of—calm and 
actual faces;

I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the 
world are latent in any iota of the world;

I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes 
are limitless—in vain I try to think how limitless;

I do not doubt that the orbs, and the systems of orbs, 
play their swift sports through the air on pur-
pose—and that I shall one day be eligible to 
do as much as they, and more than they;

I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on, 
millions of years;

I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and ex-
teriors have their exteriors—and that the eye-
sight has another eye-sight, and the hearing 
another hearing, and the voice another voice;

I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of 
young men are provided for—and that the 
deaths of young women, and the deaths of little 
children, are provided for;

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the 
horrors of them—no matter whose wife, child, 
husband, father, lover, has gone down—are 
provided for, to the minutest points;

I do not doubt that shallowness, meanness, malig-
nance, are provided for;

I do not doubt that cities, you, America, the remain-
der of the earth, politics, freedom, degrada-
tions, are carefully provided for;

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen, 
any where, at any time, is provided for, in the 
inherences of things.