Not Youth Pertains to Me
1819-1892
Not youth pertains to me,
Nor delicatesse, I cannot beguile the time with talk,
Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant,
In the learn'd coterie sitting constrain'd and still, for learning
inures not to me,
Beauty, knowledge, inure not to me--yet there are two or three things
inure to me,
I have nourish'd the wounded and sooth'd many a dying soldier,
And at intervals waiting or in the midst of camp,
Composed these songs.
DayPoems Poem No. 2044
<a href="http://www.daypoems.net/poems/2044.html">Not Youth Pertains to Me by Walt Whitman</a>
The DayPoems Poetry Collection, www.daypoems.net
Timothy Bovee, editor
Poets Poems