You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me

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

You lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs,
And I some well-shorn tree of field or orchard-row;
You tokens diminute and lorn⁠—(not now the flush of May, or July clover-bloom⁠—no grain of August now;)
You pallid banner-staves⁠—you pennants valueless⁠—you overstay’d of time,
Yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest,
The faithfulest⁠—hardiest⁠—last.

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). “You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me.” First published in November Boughs (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1888). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/walt-whitman/you-lingering-sparse-leaves-of-me/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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