Walt Whitman

Victress on the Peaks

Victress on the Peaks - meaning Summary

Victory Wrapped in Mourning

The poem addresses Liberty as a triumphant figure atop the peaks, victorious over enemies and radiant in triumph. The speaker refuses to offer celebratory verse; instead he presents a book bearing darkness, wounds, and the songs of the dead. The gesture frames liberty’s victory as inseparable from sacrifice and mourning, insisting that true homage must acknowledge pain, loss, and the human cost behind triumph.

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LO! Victress on the peaks! Where thou, 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; Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee, Flauntest now unharm’d, in immortal soundness and bloom—lo! in these hours supreme, No poem proud, I, chanting, bring to thee—nor mastery’s rapturous verse; But a book, containing night’s darkness, and blood-dripping wounds, And psalms of the dead.

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