Leaves of Grass

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.