Queries to my seventieth year:
Approaching, nearing, curious,
Thou dim, uncertain spectre—bringest thou life or death?
Wilt stir the waters yet? Or haply cut me short for good? 

I am still here, no very mark’d change, fairly buoyant spirits—better spirits and comfort than I deserve—but surely, slowly ebbing. I suppose I am, in a sense, dying.
I am convinced that I can feint off the end for a long time to come. But my strength can’t stand the pull forever, and must sooner or later give out. I know that death has struck me, and it is only a matter of time. I seem sentenced to death; everything but the date is fixed.

I may linger along yet some time,
Maybe quite a time yet—but may fall back,
I shall rally or partially rally, only every time lets me down a peg,
The pegs coming gradually out;
Every month or so I notice another peg dropped.
It don’t take an expert weather prophet to see some storms coming,
My only hope, to keep comfortable as I can and do what I may as long as I may,
Going down at last without disgrace.

My disease is now call’d progressive paralysis, with a more or less rapid tendency (or eligibility) to the heart. Formidable isn’t it? The worst is there may be something in it. The doctors put four chances out of five against me—gave me quite up more than once.

I am wide awake to the fact of my gathering physical disabilities,
Gradually though surely losing strength.
It is a beginning of the end—disabilities multiplying—
Life becoming every way more difficult;
I am eager for feet again! But my feet are eternally gone.
Deadly weak, my sufferings much of the time are fearful,
I have no relief, no escape—it is monotony, monotony—in pain.

My brain will not solidify—more and more palpably neglects or refuses even slight tasks. I seem to have lost the power of consecutive thought and work—mental volition, I might say—as if the ground had been swept from under my feet, as if I had nothing whereon to stand.
My memory is very bad and becoming worse! The most tantalizing habit it has is of remembering just enough of a thing to remind me of how much is forgotten.

I seem to be washed out, to go forth with the tide—the never-returning tide;
I feel almost as if emptied of the last fill of life.
What does the ship come to—the useless, clinging old hulk,
Its last voyage over, its tasks all done?An old, well-knit, strong-timbered keel takes a long time to break up,
But we must not deceive ourselves—no, there is no gain in that,
We are at the last twist of the road, the very last.

I sit here, let the elements play about me,
Wait, let things happen, see what they will bring about;
But that is as much as the rock does to fulfill its part—
Growing best in keeping to its place!
Your dog here is too old to learn any new tricks,
To stop at the door of the tomb and study a new a b c.

The worst thing with an old man when he is sick is that he sees nothing ahead—that for him is nothing but reverse, downhill. A young fellow, when he is sick—when he is poor—when he is troubled—has everything before him. But a man old, quite old, who has been badly whacked, as I have, has but to wait and expect an end. I am always waiting now.

Out in the brilliancy of the footlights, over and over again, the season through—walking, gesticulating, singing,
Filling the attention of perhaps a crowded audience, and making many a breath and pulse swell and rise—
O so much passion and imparted life!
But then, sooner or later, inevitably wending to the exit door.
One day to all of us there comes the closing of the doors—the entrances, the exits,
So that one may pass no more out or in,
Vanishing to sight and ear, and never materializing on this earth’s stage again.

As the time draws nigh glooming, a cloud, a dread beyond of I know not what darkens me,
Shadows of nightfall deepening, soon to be lost for aye in the darkness.
Shadowy death dogs my steps,
Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face,
Perhaps soon some day or night while I am singing,
My voice will suddenly cease.

They say I am better, but still at death’s door,
Deadly weak, but the spark seems to glimmer yet,
If there’s something to do, it is well for a fellow to do it, without pause.
There’s the book—the dear book—forever waiting,
And I seem to be more feeble than ever,
But there’s no use dying now when there’s still a job of work to do;
Some night it will be a last kiss, a last good night—but I hope not just yet,
I don’t want to sink—drown—before the book is out.

There has come to me a notion, amounting to a certainty, that I am dying!
I have gone down and down,
As if resistlessly, hopelessly, inexorably, pressed,
The clouds already closing in upon me,
Oh! it is the feeling of death, my terminus near,
Haply I may not live another day.
Friends to whom I have mentioned this fear endeavor to chase it away by saying that it is the result of my brooding thoughts, and that such vagaries often come into the minds of people under a great dread. They all give me good advice, which I can’t follow; I must be left to die in my own way. I do not answer them, but I feel none the less the certainty of my death.

Nor is it painful to me—the experiences going with this do not disturb me.
I myself for long, O death, have breath’d my every breath,
Amid the nearness and the silent thought of thee,
I do not fear thee,
I do not seem to have any scare in me.

Keep good heart—the worst is to come, was one of the sayings of my dear old father.
We must not be afraid of the worst—indeed, we must invite the worst,
Must bear all, brave all, and, coming to the test, throw or be thrown by it,
We must stick, eternally stick, until sticking itself will stick no more.
So I do not kick—I am willing to take what comes,
It is all right whichever way—death or life—half life, half death—everything.

How tired, how good, I feel,
Very tired, O very—but not sick.
I keep cheerful—was born with it,
The fact that I am consciously staring death in the face doesn’t make me less cheerful,
I am sure I’ve got stock enough of it to last to the finish,
The sweet sun has got into all my old bones.

I pride myself on being a real humorist underneath everything else. We can’t cut out our fun even at the edge of the grave; I think fun is entitled to its innings even with death—
Hundreds write; they all beg autographs. One of the autograph fellows intimated that I might die soon, which made his request a very urgent one. I was so tickled with his cheek and honesty that I signed and sent him the card.
Death has its advantages—death is like being invited out to a good dinner.
I am a lame though not yet quite dead duck.
Some time before long I’ll get one of these bad days and that’ll be the end of me. Then you fellows will have a funeral on your hands—have you got a funeral ready?

I am here, very low, very low—but holding the fort, after a way,
Not yet surrendered, yet very near surrender-point.
For a while I may fight off the end,
But the enemy is strong and valiant—is sure of victory.

O Death! O you striding there! O I cannot yet! a battle-contest yet!
Across the horizon’s edge, two mighty masterful vessels, sailers, steal upon us—
Old age’s ship and crafty death’s—
We’ll make race a-time upon the seas—a battle-contest yet! bear lively there! 
Our joys of strife and derring-do to the last!

Something to eke out a minute additional—
A poem expressing the thoughts, pictures, aspirations fit to be perused during the days of the approach of death,
The most triumphant, jubilant poem,
This ought to express the sentiment of great jubilant glee for great deaths—in battle, in martyrdom,
For great renunciations—for love, for friendship,
Especially for the close of life (the close of a great true life)—
I have prepared myself for that purpose.

Now for my last—
Goodbye my fancy!
Farewell dear mate, dear love!
Long have we lived, joy’d, caress’d together,
Delightful!—now separation,
Our time, our term has come,
The pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done.

Ineffable grace of dying days,
Old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death,
Only desirous of quietly waiting the final change,
Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping,
The soothing sanity and blitheness of completion. 

Nor yield we mournfully, we who have grandly fill’d our time;
My favorite couplet:
Over the past not God himself has power,
For what has been has been, and I have had my hour!
We welcome what we wrought for through the past,
And leave the field for them to grandly fill their time.

But let me look back a moment,
An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot,
I and my book, casting backward glances over our travel’d road.
Precious ever-lingering memories,
Of you, my father, of you my mother dear—you, brothers, sisters, friends—
How sweet the silent backward tracings!
How the soul loves to float amid such reminiscences!

Thanks in old age—thanks ere I go,
For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books—or colors, forms,
For shelter, wine and meat—for sweet appreciation,
For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere life,
For all my days—not those of peace alone—the days of war the same,
(A special laurel ere I go, to life’s war’s chosen ones,
The cannoneers of song and thought.)
As soldier from an ended war return’d,
As traveler out of myriads, to the long procession retrospective,
Thanks—joyful thanks!

My work is done,
Nothing remains now but to ring the curtain down,
What is there more, that I lag and pause?
Shunning, postponing severance—seeking to ward off the last word ever so little,
Loth, O so loth to depart!
As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging,
So hard for his hand to release those hands—no more will they meet,
No more for communion of sorrow and joy, of old and young,
A far-stretching journey awaits him, to return no more.

E’en at the exit-door turning, crouch extended with unshut mouth,
An old man’s garrulous lips among the rest,
Garrulous to the very last.
Hasten throat and sound your last, peal the old cry once more,
Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack’d voice harping, screeching chirps—lingering-dying ones—
Goodbye and goodbye with emotional lips repeating.

Enough O gliding present—enough O summ’d-up past—
Is there a single final farewell?
Behind a goodbye there lurks much of the salutation of another beginning.

NEXT: DEATH

The texts in this anthology should NOT be cited as direct quotations from Whitman. If you want to quote from this site for something you are writing or posting, please read this first (click here).