On the Beach at Night Alone

I have been instructed by my thesis advisor to compile twelve poems which are meaningful to me as a sort of compass for my project. So far I have two. This is not one of them, but it's from one of my favorite collections and maybe that counts for something.

"On the Beach at Night Alone"

On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future. 

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

- by Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass (originally published in 1855; final edition in 1891)