Daily Whitman

Not Youth Pertains to Me

  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.