A CAROL CLOSING SIXTY-NINE.

A carol closing sixty-nine—a résumé—a repetition,
My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,
Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;
Of you, my Land—your rivers, prairies, States—you, mottled
Flag I love,
Your aggregate retain’d entire—Of north, south, east and west,
your items all;
Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,
The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia
falling pall-like round me,
The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,
The undiminish’d faith—the groups of loving friends.

— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, The Deathbed Edition, 1892

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   May 2016