by Whitman · Cluster: Poet as Prophet · Prophet · Romantic Movement (Sensibility)
Abstract
To fully grasp the great poets one needs old age and the experience it brings as the final faculty.
Connections
Topoi: Poet as Prophet Motifs: Music and Song Themes & Concepts: Artist and Society, Memory and Time, Doubt Forms & Genres: Epigram Historical References: Bible, Ancient Greece
Testo integrale / Full text
Cluster: SANDS AT SEVENTY
To get the final lilt of songs,
To penetrate the inmost lore of poets—to know the mighty ones,
Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespere, Tennyson, Emerson;
To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt—
to truly understand,
To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price,
Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.