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Home  »  Leaves of Grass  »  127. Year that Trembled

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

127. Year that Trembled

YEAR that trembled and reel’d beneath me!

Your summer wind was warm enough—yet the air I breathed froze me;

A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken’d me;

Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself;

Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?

And sullen hymns of defeat?