What Remains?

“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains?”

“Nature remains.”

― Walt Whitman, Specimen Days

“With the sentiment of the stars and moon such nights I get all the free margins and indefiniteness of music or

poetry, fused in geometry's utmost exactness.”

― Walt Whitman, Specimen Days

二宮浜の春の月、1931年、川瀬巴水

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.

— Walt Whitman, Specimen Days