Book 34 - Sands At Seventy
A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
A carol closing sixty-nine--a resume--a repetition,
My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,
Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;
Of you, my Land--your rivers, prairies, States--you, mottled Flag I love,
Your aggregate retain'd entire--Of north, south, east and west, your
items all;
Of me myself--the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,
The body wreck'd, old, poor and paralyzed--the strange inertia
falling pall-like round me,
The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,
The undiminish'd faith--the groups of loving friends.