Whitman: This then is life (6 days to DR. BIRD)

One of my favorite quotations from Leaves of Grass was going to be the epigraph. But I decided to leave the quotation in the text only, since it comes to James at a powerful moment in the novel.

"Victory, union, faith, identity, time,
The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery,
Eternal progress, the cosmos, and the modern reports.

This then is life,
Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.

How curious! how real!"

"Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun."