The Poetry of Walt Whitman

TOWSON, Maryland, Thursday, September 7, 2017 - In the last post I included, at the end, a short poem by the great Walt Whitman.  The sublime, wonderfully talented Whitman, one of the greatest of all the American Poets, penned this brief work sometime during his adult life, a life profoundly affected by America's Civil War.  Another Whitman work addressed an event in that war directly.  Entitled, "Hush'd Be The Camps To-Day (May 5, 1865), the poem directly concerns the death of the Union Officer in charge of the Camp where Whitman served as a nurse and orderly.  Or is it?  Some, including this author, believe it is also about Lincoln.

Hush'd be the camps to-day,
And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons,
And each with musing soul retire to celebrate,
Our dear commander's death.

No more for him life's stormy conflicts,
Nor victory, nor defeat -- no more time's dark events,
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.

But sing poet in our name,
Sing of the love we bore him -- because you, -- dweller in camps, know it truly.

As they invault the coffin there,
Sing -- as they close the doors of earth upon him -- one verse
For the heavy hearts of soldiers.

Few people realize how profoundly Whitman was affected by the War.  He had an up close view of it, coming into daily contact with some of the most grievously wounded.  He also cared for his brother, who fought in the war and was wounded in battle.  

Whitman also wrote this very short poem about President Abraham Lincoln: "This Dust Was Once the Man."

This Dust Was Once the Man,
Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand,
Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,
War saved the Union of these States.

Of course, Whitman wrote a long dramatic poem that reminded some of the mastery of the poetic art that Milton mastered so perfectly.  Under a more general title, "Memories of President Lincoln," the sub-title of this poem is "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd".

I will not reprint the poem here.  It would take forever for a plodder like me to retype.  Any anthology of Whitman's works will have this poem.  The second verse, however, is so powerful that it takes one's breath away.  This is it:

Oh powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night -- O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear'd -- O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless -- O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

Also of equal power is the last section of Verse 15:

I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them.
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them.
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought.
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,
The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,
And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.

According to the web page of the Academy of American Poets, Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 in Long Island New York.  He was one of nine children that were born to a home builder and his wife.  He died on May 26, 1892.  He is most celebrated - and criticized - for the volume of poems entitled, "Leaves of Grass."  He was never rich and often time barely scraped by.  He continued to work on his poetry until his last days.

Along with Emily Dickinson, he is considered to be America's greatest poet.