Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Published Writings
  3. Periodicals
  4. Poem Titles
  5. per.00135

Old Age's Lambent Peaks

About This Item

  • Title: Old Age's Lambent Peaks
  • Date: September 1888
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00135
  • Source: Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 38 (September 1888): 735. 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 Heather Morton Leslie Ianno Susan Belasco
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Old Age's Lambent Peaks." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 19 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00135.xml (TEI)
per.00135.001

OLD AGE'S LAMBENT PEAKS.1

THE touch of flame—the illuminating fire—the loftiest look at last, O'er city, passion, sea—o'er prairie, mountain, wood—the earth itself; The airy, different, changing hues of all, in falling twilight, Objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences; The calmer sight—the golden setting, clear and broad: So much i' the atmosphere, the points of view, the situations whence we scan, Bro't out by them alone—so much (perhaps the best) unreck'd before; The lights indeed from them—old age's lambent peaks. Walt Whitman.

Notes

1. Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888). [back]

Back to top