Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.”
- Source
- Song of Myself
- Date
- 1855
Meaning of “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow…”
Death becomes continuity with nature rather than simple disappearance, connecting mortality with renewal, earth, and the lives that follow.
Where does it come from?
Leaves of Grass (1855), untitled first-edition poem later known as “Song of Myself,” printed page 56 (Wikisource scan page 62). The line belongs to the poem’s final movement, later numbered section 52; the 1855 record remains tied to the unnumbered first edition rather than inheriting later section structure.
