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Poems
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To Those Who've Fail'd.
To those who've fail'd in aspirations vast,To unnamed soldiers, fall'n in front, on the lead,
To calm, devoted engineers, to over ardent
travellers, to pilots on their ships,
To many a song and picture without parturi-
tion, I'd rear a laurel cover'd monument
High, high above the rest—to all cut off before
their time,
Possess'd by some great spirit of fire
Quenched by an early death.
WALT WHITMAN.
Copy-text
Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm copy of an original issue.
Publication Information
"To Those Who've Fail'd."
New York Herald
27 January 1888:
6.
Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888).
Notes
Whitman made a number of changes to the poem for its printing in "Sands at Seventy," including making "aspirations" singular in the first line; inserting the word "lofty" and changing "parturition" to "recognition" in the fourth line; and replacing "great" with "strange" in the final line. The punctuation also differs in places.
Whitman Archive ID
per.00092