Life

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) · Leaves of Grass · Sands at Seventy · 1888

Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man;
(Have former armies fail’d? then we send fresh armies⁠—and fresh again;)
Ever the grappled mystery of all earth’s ages old or new;
Ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping hands, the loud applause;
Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last;
Struggling to-day the same⁠—battling the same.

Where this text comes from

First published in November Boughs (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1888). Printed in “Sands at Seventy,” the verse section of November Boughs, and gathered into Leaves of Grass as the First Annex in 1891–92, which is the arrangement the corpus text follows. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1] [2]

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, sands-at-seventy.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L6.

Cite this poem

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). “Life.” First published in November Boughs (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1888). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/walt-whitman/life/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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