Not Youth Pertains To Me

Walt Whitman

   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.

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