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TRUE CONQUERORS.
Old farmers, travellers, workmen (no matterhow crippled or bent),
Old sailors, out of many a perilous voyage,
storm and wreck,
Old soldiers from campaigns, with all their
wounds, defeats and scars;
Enough that they've survived it all—long life's
unflinching ones!
Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have
emerged at all—in that alone,
True conquerors of life o'er all the rest.
WALT WHITMAN.
Copy-text
Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm copy of an original issue.
Publication Information
"True Conquerors."
New York Herald
15 February 1888:
6.
Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888).
Notes
The Herald printing of "True Conquerors" differs slightly from the poem's later printing in "Sands at Seventy." The fourth line of the "Sands at Seventy" version reads, "Enough that they've survived at all—long life's unflinching ones," and the final line omits the words "of life."
Whitman Archive ID
per.00095