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… - Walt Whitman

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

The smallest sprout shows there is really 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 appear’d.

All goes onward and outward — nothing collapses;
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death.

Although this poetry collection was first published in 1855, when Whitman was 36 years old, the poet spent his whole life revising the poems in several editions.

Sea of stretch'd ground-swells,
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths,
Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell'd yet always-ready graves,
Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea,
I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases.

Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made, The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,