free-verse8 lines
Not Youth Pertains To Me
by Walt WhitmanNot 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.