Ah Poverties, Wincings and Sulky Retreats
Ah Poverties, Wincings and Sulky Retreats - meaning Summary
Resilience Against Inner Foes
Whitman addresses his inner failings and everyday humiliations—shallow talk, broken resolutions, painful friendships—as recurring foes in a life seen as continual conflict. The poem catalogues these discomforts but refuses surrender, asserting a future emergence of the speaker’s "real self" that will march forth and claim unquestioned victory. It frames personal struggle as temporary and transformative, fitting the larger Leaves of Grass theme of selfhood and renewal.
Read Complete AnalysesAH poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats! Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me! (For what is my life, or any man’s life, but a conflict with foes—the old, the incessant war?) You degradations—you tussle with passions and appetites; You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds, the sharpest of all;) You toil of painful and choked articulations—you meannesses; You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;) You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother’d ennuis; Ah, think not you finally triumph—My real self has yet to come forth; It shall yet march forth o’ermastering, till all lies beneath me; It shall yet stand up the soldier of unquestion’d victory.
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