Year That Trembled and Reel'd Beneath Me


  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?
by Walt Whitman
Written around 1891. 72 reads.