Lo! Victress on the Peaks!
by Walt Whitman
· 1865
Published 01/07/1865
Lo! Victress on the peaks!
Where thou standest, with mighty brow, regarding the world,
(The world, O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee;)
Out of its countless, beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all;
Where thou, dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee,
Towerest now unharm'd, in immortal soundness and bloom— lo! in this hour supreme,
No poem proud I, chanting, bring to thee—nor mastery's rapturous verse;
But a little book, containing night's darkness, and blood-drippingblood-dripping wounds
And psalms of the dead.