Not Youth Pertains to Me

 NOT youth pertains to me, 
Nor delicatesse—I cannot beguile the time with talk; 
Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant; 
In the learn’d coterie sitting constrain’d and still—for learning. inures
 not to
 me; 
Beauty, knowledge, inure not to me—yet there are two or three things inure to me;
I have nourish’d the wounded, and sooth’d many a dying soldier, 
And at intervals, waiting, or in the midst of camp, 
Composed these songs.

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