My Legacy

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) · Leaves of Grass · Songs of Parting · 1876

The business man the acquirer vast,
After assiduous years surveying results, preparing for departure,
Devises houses and lands to his children, bequeaths stocks, goods, funds for a school or hospital,
Leaves money to certain companions to buy tokens, souvenirs of gems and gold.

But I, my life surveying, closing,
With nothing to show to devise from its idle years,
Nor houses nor lands, nor tokens of gems or gold for my friends,
Yet certain remembrances of the war for you, and after you,
And little souvenirs of camps and soldiers, with my love,
I bind together and bequeath in this bundle of songs.

Where this text comes from

First published in Two Rivulets (Camden, 1876). Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1876 Two Rivulets scan. 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, songs-of-parting.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L10.

Cite this poem

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). “My Legacy.” First published in Two Rivulets (Camden, 1876). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/walt-whitman/my-legacy/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

More by Walt Whitman