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The Final Lilt of Songs

About This Item

  • Title: The Final Lilt of Songs
  • Date: 16 April 1888
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00084
  • Source: New York Herald 16 April 1888: 4. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm copy of an original issue. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the periodical poems, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang April Lambert Susan Belasco
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Final Lilt of Songs." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 25 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00084.xml (TEI)
per.00084.004per.00084.004_cropped

THE FINAL LILT OF SONGS.1

[WRITTEN FOR THE HERALD.] To get the final lilt of songs, To penetrate the inmost lore of poets—to know 
  the mighty ones, Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespeare, 
  Tennyson, Emerson; To diagnose the shifting delicate tints of love 
  and pride and doubt—to truly understand, To encompass these, the last keen faculty and 
  entrance price, Old age, and what it brings from all its past ex- 
 periences. WALT WHITMAN.

Notes

1. Reprinted as "To Get the Final Lilt of Songs" in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888). [back]

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