Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) · Leaves of Grass · From Noon to Starry Night · 1867

Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats,
Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me,
(For what is my life or any man’s life but a conflict with foes, the old, the incessant war?)
You degradations, you tussle with passions and appetites,
You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds the sharpest of all!)
You toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses,
You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;)
You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother’d ennuis!
Ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come forth,
It shall yet march forth o’ermastering, till all lies beneath me,
It shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory.

Where this text comes from

First published in Leaves of Grass (New York, 1867). Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the Whitman Archive transcription of the 1867 Chapin edition (ppp.00473). The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass, from-noon-to-starry-night.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L11.

Cite this poem

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). “Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats.” First published in Leaves of Grass (New York, 1867). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/walt-whitman/ah-poverties-wincings-and-sulky-retreats/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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