Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Published Writings
  3. Periodicals
  4. Poem Titles
  5. per.00032

The Pallid Wreath

About This Item

  • Title: The Pallid Wreath
  • Date: 10 January 1891
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00032
  • Source: Critic 18 (10 January 1891): 18. 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 Susan Belasco
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Pallid Wreath." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 26 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00032.xml (TEI)
per.00032.001per.00032.001_cropped

The Pallid Wreath1

SOMEHOW I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is, Let it remain back there on its nail suspended, With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch'd, and the white now gray 
  and ashy, One wither'd rose put years ago for thee, dear friend, But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded? Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead? No, while memories subtly play—the past vivid as ever; For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw 
  thee, Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever: So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach, It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid. CAMDEN, January 4, 1891. WALT WHITMAN.

Notes

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

Back to top