1. Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888). [back]
2. This poem is likely the one Whitman mentions in a letter to Richard Maurice Bucke on February 16, 1888: "it is chilly here as I finish this—my little bird sits hunch'd up in a lump, & sings not—but spring weather is coming & early summer & I will write a little poem ab't it to warm me up." For the full letter, see Edwin Haviland Miller, ed., The Correspondence (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 4: 151. [back]