Published Works

Books by Whitman

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [begin page 249] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

NOT YOUTH PERTAINS TO ME.

NOT youth pertains to me,

Nor delicatesse, I cannot beguile the time with talk,

Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant,

In the learn'd coterie sitting constrain'd and still, for learning
inures not to me,

Beauty, knowledge, inure not to me—yet there are two or three
things inure to me,

I have nourish'd the wounded and sooth'd many a dying soldier,

And at intervals waiting or in the midst of camp,

Composed these songs.

Distributed under a Creative Commons License. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, editors.