The Walt Whitman Archive
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About this Item
Title: The Pallid Wreath
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: January 10, 1891
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, and Susan Belasco
 image 1 |  cropped image 1 |
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,
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,
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.