Walt Whitman Poems : To Get the Final Lilt of Songs

To get the final lilt of songs,
To penetrate the inmost lore of poets--to know the mighty ones,
Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespere, Tennyson, Emerson;
To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt--
to truly understand,
To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price,
Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.