by Whitman · Cluster: War and its Cost · American Civil War · Battlefield
Abstract
A free-verse lyric with refrain recounting recurring nightmares of the Civil War dead; themes of war’s cost, dreams, memory and death.
Connections
Motifs: Dreams, Death, Memory Themes & Concepts: War and its Cost Historical References: American Civil War Settings: Battlefield
Testo integrale / Full text
Cluster: FROM NOON TO STARRY NIGHT
In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish, Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look,) Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide, I dream, I dream, I dream.
Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains, Of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so unearthly bright, Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather the heaps, I dream, I dream, I dream.
Long have they pass’d, faces and trenches and fields, Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the fallen, Onward I sped at the time—but now of their forms at night, I dream, I dream, I dream.