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A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine

About This Item

  • Title: A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
  • Date: 21 May 1888
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00091
  • Source: New York Herald 21 May 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. "A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 19 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00091.xml (TEI)
per.00091.004per.00091.004_cropped [WRITTEN FOR THE HERALD.]

A CAROL CLOSING SIXTY-NINE.1

A carol closing sixty-nine—a résumé—a repeti- 
 tion, My lines in joy and hope continuing on the 
  same, Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry; Of you, my Land—your rivers, prairies, States— 
  you, mottled Flag I love, Your aggregate retain'd entire—Of north, south, 
  east and west, your items all; Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in 
  my breast, The body wreck'd, old, poor and paralyzed— 
  the strange intertia falling pall-like round 
  me; The burning fires down in my sluggish blood 
  not yet extinct, The undiminish'd faith—the groups of loving 
  friends. WALT WHITMAN.

Notes

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

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