Back to Index

To Get the Final Lilt of Songs

by Walt Whitman, 1892

To get the final lilt of songs,
To penetrate the inmost lore of poets—to know the mighty ones,
Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespere, Tennyson, Emerson;
To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt— to truly understand,
To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price,
Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.

Published in Leaves of Grass
Tags:

Any corrections or public domain poems I should have here? Email me at poems (at) this domain.