Not Youth Pertains To Me

A poem by 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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