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THE FINAL LILT OF SONGS.
[WRITTEN FOR THE HERALD.]To get the final lilt of songs,
To penetrate the inmost lore of poets—to know
the mighty ones,
Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespeare,
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 ex-
periences.
WALT WHITMAN.
Publication Information
"The Final Lilt of Songs."
New York Herald
16 April 1888:
4.
Reprinted as "To Get the Final Lilt of Songs" in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888).
Whitman Archive ID
per.00084