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Title: As I Sit Writing Here

Creator: Walt Whitman

Date: May 14, 1888

Whitman Archive ID: per.00121

Source: New York Herald 14 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, and Susan Belasco

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As I Sit Writing Here.1

[WRITTEN FOR THE HERALD.]

As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,
Not my least burden is that dulness of the
 years, querilities,2
Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipa-
 tion, whimpering ennui,
May filter in my daily songs.
WALT WHITMAN.

Notes:

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

2. As noted in Leaves of Grass, Comprehensive Reader's Edition, ed. Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley (New York: New York University Press, 1965), "querilities" should read "querulities." The word is misspelled in both the Herald and "Sands at Seventy" printings of the poem. [back]


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