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Walt Whitman · Leaves of Grass

Poem 297 of 382 · Sands at Seventy

To Those Who’ve Fail’d

— ✻ —

To those who’ve fail’d, in aspiration vast,
To unnam’d soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
To calm, devoted engineers--to over-ardent travelers--to pilots on
their ships,
To many a lofty song and picture without recognition--I’d rear
laurel-cover’d monument,
High, high above the rest--To all cut off before their time,
Possess’d by some strange spirit of fire,
Quench’d by an early death.

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