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The Pallid Wreath
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,
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,
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.
Publication Information
"The Pallid Wreath."
Critic
18 (10 January 1891):
18.
Reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891).
Whitman Archive ID
per.00032