by Whitman · Cluster: Memory and Time · Memory · Nostalgia
Abstract
Of a whole city only a clinging lover is remembered; love, memory, the city, parting. Short free-verse lyric.
Connections
Motifs: City, Memory Themes & Concepts: Romantic Love, Memory and Time, Grief and Loss Forms & Genres: Free Verse
Testo integrale / Full text
Cluster: CHILDREN OF ADAM
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.