“Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me”
(1862)

by Walt Whitman

Year that trembled and reel’d beneath me!
Your summer wind was warm enough—yet the air I breathed froze me;
A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken’d me;
Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself;
Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?
And sullen hymns of defeat?

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