Quicksand Years

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) · Leaves of Grass · Whispers of Heavenly Death · 1865

Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither,
Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me,
Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess’d soul, eludes not,
One’s-self must never give way⁠—that is the final substance⁠—that out of all is sure,
Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains?
When shows break up what but One’s-Self is sure?

Where this text comes from

First published in Drum-Taps (New York, 1865). Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1865 Drum-Taps 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, whispers-of-heavenly-death.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). “Quicksand Years.” First published in Drum-Taps (New York, 1865). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/walt-whitman/quicksand-years/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

More by Walt Whitman