Part 3 (1/2)
[An areon, who at the ti the soldiers in the hospitals, has since told me that his principles of operation, effective as they were, seeely few, simple, and on a low key,--to act upon the appetite, to cheer by a healthy and fitly bracing appearance and demeanor; and to fill and satisfy in certain cases the affectional longings of the patients, was about all He carried a; spoke not to anyword, or a trifling gift and a look He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat Crossing the fields in sureat bunch of dandelion blosso and scatter on the cots, as reminders of out-door air and sunshi+ne
When practicable, he ca and croards of the , only after preparations as for a festival,--strengthened by a good meal, rest, the bath, and fresh underclothes He entered with a huge haversack slung over his shoulder, full of appropriate articles, with parcels under his arms, and protuberant pockets He would soood-sized basket filled with oranges, and would go round for hours paring and dividing the the feverish and thirsty]
Of his devotion to the wounded soldiers there are many witnesses A well-known correspondent of the ”New York Herald” writes thus about hi the sufferers on the Peninsula after a battle there Subsequently I saw hi his way there, with basket or haversack on his ar his face His devotion surpassed the devotion of woman It would take a voluhtfulness
”Never shall I forget one night when I accoh a hospital filled with those wounded young A in deathless numbers There were three rows of cots, and each cot bore its , there was a smile of affection and welcoht up the place as it hted by the presence of the God of Love From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or in whispers; they eazed at hiave a feords of cheer; for another he wrote a letter hoar, a pipe and tobacco, a sheet of paper or a postage-stas were in his capacious haversack Froe for o an errand; to another, soive a s for them no nurse or doctor could do, and he see The lights had gleaht before he left it, and, as he took his way towards the door, you could hear the voices of ain! coain!'”
III
Out of that experience in camp and hospital the pieces called ”Drued in his ”Leaves,”--were produced
Their descriptions and pictures, therefore, couerreotypes of the poet's own actualthe bad cases of the wounded after a battle The saht in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim,” ”Come up from the Fields, Father,” etc, etc
The reader of this section of Whitman's work soon discovers that it is not the purpose of the poet to portray battles and cans, or to celebrate special leaders or uish that follow in the train of war He perhaps feels that the permanent condition of modern society is that of peace; that war as a business, as a rowth, has served its ti the vast difference between ancient and modern warfare, both in the spirit and in the means, Homer's pictures are essentially true yet, and no additions to them can be made War can never be to us what it has been to the nations of all ages down to the present; never theover all the affairs of national and individual life, but only an episode, a passing interruption; and the poet, who in our day would be as true to his nation and times as Homer was to his, ress, and even benevolence Vast arht and disappear in a day; a o back to the avocations of peace without aclearly the tendency that prevails
Apostrophizing the genius of America in the supreme hour of victory, he says:--
”No poe to thee--nor ht's darkness and blood-dripping wounds, And psalms of the dead”
The collection is also re Under the head of ”Reconciliation” are these lines:--
”Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost!
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world;For my enemy is dead--a man divine as myself is dead; I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin--I draw near; I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin”
Perhaps the most noteworthy of Whitman's war poems is the one called ”When Lilacs last in the Door-yard bloomed,” written in commemoration of President Lincoln
The , solemn, and varied music; and it involves in its construction a principle after which perhaps the great coy At first it would seem to defy analysis, so rapt is it, and so indirect No reference whatever is made to the mere fact of Lincoln's death; the poet does not even dwell upon its unprovoked atrocity, and only occasionally is the tone that of larand art, which is the most complex when it seems most simple, he seizes upon three beautiful facts of nature, which he weaves into a wreath for the dead President's toht is of death, but around this he curiously twines, first, the early-bloo lilacs which the poetof the hersters, heard at twilight in the dusky cedars; and with these the evening star, which, as ht in the early part of that eventful spring, hung low in the ith unusual and tender brightness These are the premises whence he starts his solemn chant
The attitude, therefore, is not that of being bowed down and weeping hopeless tears, but of singing a commemorative hymn, in which the voices of nature join, and fits that exalted condition of the soul which serious events and the presence of death induce There are no words of y, no statistics, and no story or narrative; but there are pictures, processions, and a strange rief and triu lustrous star, or the soht of death; then a recurrence to the open scenery of the land as it lay in the April light, ”the su with richness and the fields all busy with labor,” presently dashed in upon by a spectral vision of arain, of the white skeletons of young round Hence the piece has little or nothing of the character of the usual productions on such occasions It is dramatic; yet there is no develop and returning of i of lilac from the bush in the door-yard,--the dark cloud falls on the land,--the long funeral sets out,--and then the apostrophe:--
”Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land, With the pos, with the cities draped in black, With the show of the States the, With processions long and winding, and the flaht, With the countless torches lit--with the silent sea of faces, and the unbared heads, With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the soht, with the thousand voices rising strong and solees, pour'd around the coffin, To dians--Where a bells' perpetual clang; Here! coffin that slowly passes, I give youof lilac
”(Nor for you, for one alone; Blosso; For fresh as thefor you, O sane and sacred death
”All over bouquets of roses, O death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies; But mostly and now the lilac that bloos fro for you, For you and the coffins all of you, O death)”