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About this Item

Title: My 71st Year

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: November 1889

Whitman Archive ID: per.00006

Source: Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 39 (November 1889): 31. 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, Ramon Guerra, and Susan Belasco




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MY 71ST YEAR.1

AFTER surmounting threescore and ten,
With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows,
My parents' deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing passions of me, the war of '63
and '4,
As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or as haply after battle,
At twilight, hobbling, answering yet to company roll-call, Here, with vital voice,
Reporting yet, saluting yet the Officer over all.
Walt Whitman.

Notes:

1. Reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891). [back]


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