by Whitman · Cluster: Self-Knowledge · Immortality · Self-Reliance
Abstract
In autumn woods the speaker finds an unknown soldier’s grave with a scrawled epitaph that haunts him for years; an elegy of remembrance and comradeship.
Connections
Motifs: Grave, Autumn Themes & Concepts: Comradeship, Grief and Loss, Memory (2) Forms & Genres: Elegy
Testo integrale / Full text
Cluster: DRUM-TAPS
As toilsome I wander’d Virginia’s woods,
To the music of rustling leaves kick’d by my feet, (for ’twas autumn,)
I mark’d at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier;
Mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat, (easily all could
understand,)
The halt of a mid-day hour, when up! no time to lose—yet this sign left,
On a tablet scrawl’d and nail’d on the tree by the grave,
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering,
Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life,
Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt, alone, or
in the crowded street,
Comes before me the unknown soldier’s grave, comes the inscription
rude in Virginia’s woods,
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.