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Drum Taps: The Complete Civil War Poems
A stunning and elegant 150th Anniversary Edition of Whitman's celebrated Civil War poems, accompanied by moving photographs and artwork shedding new light on this tragic but significant chapter in American history.
Drum Taps is the complete Civil War poem collection by Walt Whitman, including the celebrated Oh, Captain, My Captain!, and augmented with Whitman's essays from the period on subjects such as Secession, Abraham Lincoln, working in the Civil War hospitals, and the assassination of the president.
For the first time ever, each poem is set on a single page, and augmented with stunning artwork from the period: bright, rich, full-color engravings from Currier & Ives; the brooding and detailed photography of Alexander Gardner and Matthew Brady; watercolors from the battfield by Winslow Homer and other famous artists; and classic photographs and art from America’s richest collections, including the Library of Congress, the National Gallery, the George Eastman House, and many other collections.
With gorgeous, old-fashioned hot type, beautifully restored period artwork, and an authoritative introduction by Civil War historian and Pulitzer Prize-winner James McPherson, this is the richest edition of these moving and thoughtful poems by America’s greatest poet ever published.
Drum Taps is the complete Civil War poem collection by Walt Whitman, including the celebrated Oh, Captain, My Captain!, and augmented with Whitman's essays from the period on subjects such as Secession, Abraham Lincoln, working in the Civil War hospitals, and the assassination of the president.
For the first time ever, each poem is set on a single page, and augmented with stunning artwork from the period: bright, rich, full-color engravings from Currier & Ives; the brooding and detailed photography of Alexander Gardner and Matthew Brady; watercolors from the battfield by Winslow Homer and other famous artists; and classic photographs and art from America’s richest collections, including the Library of Congress, the National Gallery, the George Eastman House, and many other collections.
With gorgeous, old-fashioned hot type, beautifully restored period artwork, and an authoritative introduction by Civil War historian and Pulitzer Prize-winner James McPherson, this is the richest edition of these moving and thoughtful poems by America’s greatest poet ever published.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1865
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372 people want to read
About the author
Walt Whitman
1,815 books5,451 followersWalter Whitman Jr. was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and realism in his writings and is often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described by some as obscene for its overt sensuality.
Whitman was born in Huntington on Long Island, and lived in Brooklyn as a child and through much of his career. At the age of 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, was financed with his own money and became well known. The work was an attempt to reach out to the common person with an American epic. Whitman continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until his death in 1892.
During the American Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C., and worked in hospitals caring for the wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he authored two poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and gave a series of lectures on Lincoln. After suffering a stroke towards the end of his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at the age of 72, his funeral was a public event.
Whitman's influence on poetry remains strong. Art historian Mary Berenson wrote, "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet... He is America."
Whitman was born in Huntington on Long Island, and lived in Brooklyn as a child and through much of his career. At the age of 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, was financed with his own money and became well known. The work was an attempt to reach out to the common person with an American epic. Whitman continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until his death in 1892.
During the American Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C., and worked in hospitals caring for the wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he authored two poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and gave a series of lectures on Lincoln. After suffering a stroke towards the end of his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at the age of 72, his funeral was a public event.
Whitman's influence on poetry remains strong. Art historian Mary Berenson wrote, "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet... He is America."
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March 5, 2022
Drum Taps is a collection of 43 Civil War poems by Walt Whitman, arguably the best collection of war poetry written by an American. It was published separately in 1865 but was later incorporated into his Leaves of Grass.
The Wound Dresser ~ from Drum-Taps
1.
An old man bending I come among new faces,
Years looking backward resuming in answer to children,
Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me,
(Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war,
But soon my fingers fail’d me, my face droop’d and I resign’d myself,
To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;)
Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,
Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;)
Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth,
Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us?
What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,
Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?
2.
O maidens and young men I love and that love me,
What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls,
Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover’d with sweat and dust,
In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge,
Enter the captur’d works-yet lo, like a swift-running river they fade,
Pass and are gone they fade-I dwell not on soldiers’ perils or soldiers’ joys,
(Both I remember well-many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content.)
But in silence, in dreams’ projections,
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,
So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand,
With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there,
Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.)
Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,
Straight and swift to my wounded I go,
Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground,
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital,
To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,
To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,
An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,
Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill’d again.
I onward go, I stop,
With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,
I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable,
One turns to me his appealing eyes- poor boy! I never knew you,
Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that
would save you.
3.
On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)
The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,)
The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through examine,
Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard,
(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death! In mercy come quickly.)
From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and side falling head,
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump,
And has not yet look’d on it.
I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,
But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking,
And the yellow-blue countenance see.
I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound,
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive,
While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail.
I am faithful, I do not give out,
The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,
These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast
a fire, a burning flame.)
4.
Thus in silence in dreams’ projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,
Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad,
(Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested,
Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)
A film by Zen Violence using some of the poetry:
https://vimeo.com/339257757
Here they all are:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8801/...
The Wound Dresser ~ from Drum-Taps
1.
An old man bending I come among new faces,
Years looking backward resuming in answer to children,
Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me,
(Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war,
But soon my fingers fail’d me, my face droop’d and I resign’d myself,
To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;)
Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,
Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;)
Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth,
Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us?
What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,
Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?
2.
O maidens and young men I love and that love me,
What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls,
Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover’d with sweat and dust,
In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge,
Enter the captur’d works-yet lo, like a swift-running river they fade,
Pass and are gone they fade-I dwell not on soldiers’ perils or soldiers’ joys,
(Both I remember well-many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content.)
But in silence, in dreams’ projections,
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,
So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand,
With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there,
Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.)
Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,
Straight and swift to my wounded I go,
Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground,
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital,
To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,
To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,
An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,
Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill’d again.
I onward go, I stop,
With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,
I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable,
One turns to me his appealing eyes- poor boy! I never knew you,
Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that
would save you.
3.
On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)
The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,)
The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through examine,
Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard,
(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death! In mercy come quickly.)
From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and side falling head,
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump,
And has not yet look’d on it.
I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,
But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking,
And the yellow-blue countenance see.
I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound,
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive,
While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail.
I am faithful, I do not give out,
The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,
These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast
a fire, a burning flame.)
4.
Thus in silence in dreams’ projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,
Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad,
(Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested,
Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)
A film by Zen Violence using some of the poetry:
https://vimeo.com/339257757
Here they all are:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8801/...
January 11, 2025
I just know if Walt Whitman were alive today he would be inSUFFerable.
I have never read any Walt Whitman (unless Lana counts) and I did not expect to hate this this much. First of all, I hate the writing! Yes, he has some great imagery once in a while. The cadence of the poetry is terrible, and the words in general just don’t sound good together. Period. I don’t know, maybe if I hadn’t read this immediately after Robert Frost I wouldn’t have hated it so much, but this is just SO bad in comparison. Every sentence was like nails on a chalkboard.
Second of all, yikes! Manifest destiny was his whole m.o. huh, I wish someone had told me! The low point was in “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” when he’s listing off all the ~pioneers~ and goes: “Life’s involv’d and varied pageants, / All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work, / All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves” — record scratch! Yeah this wasn’t the only poem with this vibe. You can tell Walt would have been totally cool with slavery as long as the US stayed together, all his “tan” face references….
Anyway I read through “A child’s amaze,” and then a few later poems which I tried on the off chance they were good. (They weren’t.) Some random thoughts:
“When I heard the learn’d Astronomer” - Walt would be an anti-vaxxer, lbr, Walt would be drinking raw milk at this very moment.
“The Centenarian’s Story” - This poem going “the youngest men, two thousand strong, / Rais’d in Virginia and Maryland, and many of them know personally to the General” is Walt both sides-ing. Walt would be talking about Brett Kavanaugh like “he was just a rambunctious young man, and he’s from such a nice family, we should hear him out!”
“The Dresser” is Walt going full “I am feel uncomfortable when we are not about me?”
“As I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado” - First of all, this poem is Walt saying to a Civil War Union soldier “no I’m the real hero actually.” Actually!! Also “Camerado” yeah I know you didn’t speak Spanish! The probability Walt would have used the term “friendo” in a poem in full sincerity if he were alive today is one million percent.
I have never read any Walt Whitman (unless Lana counts) and I did not expect to hate this this much. First of all, I hate the writing! Yes, he has some great imagery once in a while. The cadence of the poetry is terrible, and the words in general just don’t sound good together. Period. I don’t know, maybe if I hadn’t read this immediately after Robert Frost I wouldn’t have hated it so much, but this is just SO bad in comparison. Every sentence was like nails on a chalkboard.
Second of all, yikes! Manifest destiny was his whole m.o. huh, I wish someone had told me! The low point was in “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” when he’s listing off all the ~pioneers~ and goes: “Life’s involv’d and varied pageants, / All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work, / All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves” — record scratch! Yeah this wasn’t the only poem with this vibe. You can tell Walt would have been totally cool with slavery as long as the US stayed together, all his “tan” face references….
Anyway I read through “A child’s amaze,” and then a few later poems which I tried on the off chance they were good. (They weren’t.) Some random thoughts:
“When I heard the learn’d Astronomer” - Walt would be an anti-vaxxer, lbr, Walt would be drinking raw milk at this very moment.
“The Centenarian’s Story” - This poem going “the youngest men, two thousand strong, / Rais’d in Virginia and Maryland, and many of them know personally to the General” is Walt both sides-ing. Walt would be talking about Brett Kavanaugh like “he was just a rambunctious young man, and he’s from such a nice family, we should hear him out!”
“The Dresser” is Walt going full “I am feel uncomfortable when we are not about me?”
“As I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado” - First of all, this poem is Walt saying to a Civil War Union soldier “no I’m the real hero actually.” Actually!! Also “Camerado” yeah I know you didn’t speak Spanish! The probability Walt would have used the term “friendo” in a poem in full sincerity if he were alive today is one million percent.
July 19, 2019
The drums start heroic, but with deaths in fields and the mutilated in hospitals, they end hollow and harsh.
January 29, 2026
I read this as a part of the complete works of Walt Whitman set. I Read this at night to my newborn as I was putting him to sleep. Not a children’s book. I probably traumatized my child but there were some beautiful poems and also some tragic ones as well. A great first hand account of the horrors of war. Again, not a children’s book.
April 23, 2015
Have I only five stars to offer? Robert Duncan liked Two Rivulets best among the nine successive editions Walt Whitman prepared of his Leaves of Grass, so perhaps I should simply encourage the enterprising poetry publisher to put that one together, it's all public domain, but these editions emerging (the 1860 edition, from University of Iowa -- beautiful; the Dover November Boughs, a pleasant surprise) from various hands, here the Fordham musicologist Lawrence Kramer, make me very happy: they recognize, as it has taken too long to impress upon the American poetic consciousness, that Leaves of Grass is a single, open-form poem, which Whitman took away from, and added to, over the years, and these occasions are themselves miracles of the American imagination, worth studying in their own right, as well as for their ultimate contribution to the ongoing Leaves of Grass. Kramer's argument, that Whitman had prepared Drum Taps as a work separate from the longer work, finds confirmation in my own supposition that perhaps Whitman hoped that the appropriateness of that project would bring him a recognition thus-far denied him; however Lincoln's assassination no doubt altered the calculation, and following a second thought, which included the poems written around the Lincoln elegy, "When Lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd," Whitman seems to have lost faith in the separate volume. At that point Drum Taps was rendered back into the larger volume. (About the half the poems were discarded.) Kramer's editing is studious; his students' notes are a little windy, but in the spirit of the thing; the use of footnotes in the text proper is a missed call, but O well; and the small format is handy indeed. Let's get to the good stuff: Why is it that, among recent poet-critics putting together their Selected Whitmans, not one in my possession (Harold Bloom; Robert Hass; Robert Creeley) include "By the bivouac's fitful flame"? To me it's one of Whitman's great short poems. Here 'tis:
By the bivouac's fitful flame,
A procession winds around me, solemn and sweet and slow; -- but first I note,
The tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and woods' dim outline,
The darkness, lit spots of kindled fire -- the silence;
Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving;
The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me;)
While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts,
Of life and death -- of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away;
A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,
By the bivouac's fitful flame.
Could this be improved? The "fitful flame," fitful in that it's subject to being blown out, makes the second line's use of the rhetorical figure of syllepsis on "wind" (used to indicate a line of soldiers in long queue, and not, as we anticipate, the climate condition) all the more surprising, and pleasing, and troped at the end of the second line, where, having started with this figure of the flame's fitfulness, the poet creates, in that "but first I note," his own queue: for the trope, he's telling us, came to him in thought after he had observed those "tents of the sleeping army" -- bivouacs over the valley in the dusk as the lights come up, and the figures in his head and the figures he's not quite willing to admit to "process" around him. They are nothing more than the "shrubs and trees," other bivouacs, a landscape he can no more admit than he can "lift my eyes."
"Nothing more can be certain," Nietzsche would write five years later, in The Birth of Tragedy (1871), "than that the poet is the poet only insofar as he sees himself surrounded by forms which live and act before him, and into whose innermost being he penetrates." Whitman figures himself here as that fitful flame, and the fragility of it is unbearable ("unbearable immediacy" Nietzsche uses to characterize the Dionysian), and yet witnessed. Innermost.
By the bivouac's fitful flame,
A procession winds around me, solemn and sweet and slow; -- but first I note,
The tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and woods' dim outline,
The darkness, lit spots of kindled fire -- the silence;
Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving;
The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me;)
While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts,
Of life and death -- of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away;
A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,
By the bivouac's fitful flame.
Could this be improved? The "fitful flame," fitful in that it's subject to being blown out, makes the second line's use of the rhetorical figure of syllepsis on "wind" (used to indicate a line of soldiers in long queue, and not, as we anticipate, the climate condition) all the more surprising, and pleasing, and troped at the end of the second line, where, having started with this figure of the flame's fitfulness, the poet creates, in that "but first I note," his own queue: for the trope, he's telling us, came to him in thought after he had observed those "tents of the sleeping army" -- bivouacs over the valley in the dusk as the lights come up, and the figures in his head and the figures he's not quite willing to admit to "process" around him. They are nothing more than the "shrubs and trees," other bivouacs, a landscape he can no more admit than he can "lift my eyes."
"Nothing more can be certain," Nietzsche would write five years later, in The Birth of Tragedy (1871), "than that the poet is the poet only insofar as he sees himself surrounded by forms which live and act before him, and into whose innermost being he penetrates." Whitman figures himself here as that fitful flame, and the fragility of it is unbearable ("unbearable immediacy" Nietzsche uses to characterize the Dionysian), and yet witnessed. Innermost.
April 19, 2019
Walt Whitman’s collection of his contemporary poems about the American Civil War includes well known poems like When Lilacs Last In the Door-Yard Bloom’d; O Captain! My Captain!; When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer; and lesser known but also powerful poems like The Dresser. Read for St John’s weekend seminar.
“When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars
“When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars
August 22, 2016
At the risk of appearing to pad my stats, I'm writing a separate review of Drum Taps apart from Leaves of Grass because it is my favorite section as a whole so far and definitely deserves its own review. Similar to individual plays by the Big 3 Greeks, it seems almost obscene to have one rating and one review for Aeschylus I-IV, for example. Many theses have been written on single poems by WW, so an extra review shan't do too much harm.
A lot of people lose their shit for "Song of Myself." That isn't unwarranted; the thing is a behemoth of poetic prowess, and sums up Whitman in all of his guises pretty perfectly. T'aint my favorite though, Drum Taps is. I think it has something to do with a young WW being a nurse in the Civil War while writing it. In my early 20s I was working for a Presidential Campaign, a job that had me knocking on strangers' doors in the 110 degree heat of a Las Vegas summer. As an introvert, the job stretched me to the max; I met all kinds of crazy people and found myself in any number of absurd situations throughout a given 16-hour day. By the end of a shift when I was on the way home I felt a glorious blend of bliss and sadness. I had no family then, it was just me, so I could afford to throw everything away each day and in doing so I came close and comfortable with notions like Time and Death and Infinity; the bliss I felt wore the same shape as tragic acceptance.
I imagine WW to be in somewhat of the same mind during his nursing days. He saw a lot more blood, and dealt with even more danger and absurdity (my experience is nothing in comparison admittedly) thus his poetic voice is that much more profound. There's a certain monotone cadence I've found in select poems -- the chorus in Agammemnon, the narrative voice in much of Cormac McCarthy's works, for example -- that, to me, is the voice of a Psychopomp, a spirit that guides the souls of the dead to the afterlife. It's a voice of acceptance, of contemplation on the realities of existence (many of which are dark, and sad, and disappointing), a voice of calm Truth that helps us deal with the fact that we all must die. WW from the beginning seemed to have a Homeric tint to him; here, he ascends to the ranks of the great Hellenic tragedians.
Between the great elegiac poems there are shorter episodes -- WW meets a taciturn youth that gives him "more than all of the gifts of the world," and prays to the moon, to name a few -- so that in this slim volume, a section not particularly known among LoG, we have a perfect summary of a fatalistic and special time in one's life. It is a beautiful moment in "A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest and the Road Unknown" where WW says "I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made." Here, as in "To a Certain Civilian" where he says "For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me," WW is saying that it isn't about plot, or scansion, or flair, or wit, or publishing contracts and prizes; it is about the feeling. Writing is the failure to express grand emotions, hence it is the earnestness of the attempt and the quality of failure that counts.
A lot of people lose their shit for "Song of Myself." That isn't unwarranted; the thing is a behemoth of poetic prowess, and sums up Whitman in all of his guises pretty perfectly. T'aint my favorite though, Drum Taps is. I think it has something to do with a young WW being a nurse in the Civil War while writing it. In my early 20s I was working for a Presidential Campaign, a job that had me knocking on strangers' doors in the 110 degree heat of a Las Vegas summer. As an introvert, the job stretched me to the max; I met all kinds of crazy people and found myself in any number of absurd situations throughout a given 16-hour day. By the end of a shift when I was on the way home I felt a glorious blend of bliss and sadness. I had no family then, it was just me, so I could afford to throw everything away each day and in doing so I came close and comfortable with notions like Time and Death and Infinity; the bliss I felt wore the same shape as tragic acceptance.
I imagine WW to be in somewhat of the same mind during his nursing days. He saw a lot more blood, and dealt with even more danger and absurdity (my experience is nothing in comparison admittedly) thus his poetic voice is that much more profound. There's a certain monotone cadence I've found in select poems -- the chorus in Agammemnon, the narrative voice in much of Cormac McCarthy's works, for example -- that, to me, is the voice of a Psychopomp, a spirit that guides the souls of the dead to the afterlife. It's a voice of acceptance, of contemplation on the realities of existence (many of which are dark, and sad, and disappointing), a voice of calm Truth that helps us deal with the fact that we all must die. WW from the beginning seemed to have a Homeric tint to him; here, he ascends to the ranks of the great Hellenic tragedians.
Between the great elegiac poems there are shorter episodes -- WW meets a taciturn youth that gives him "more than all of the gifts of the world," and prays to the moon, to name a few -- so that in this slim volume, a section not particularly known among LoG, we have a perfect summary of a fatalistic and special time in one's life. It is a beautiful moment in "A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest and the Road Unknown" where WW says "I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made." Here, as in "To a Certain Civilian" where he says "For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me," WW is saying that it isn't about plot, or scansion, or flair, or wit, or publishing contracts and prizes; it is about the feeling. Writing is the failure to express grand emotions, hence it is the earnestness of the attempt and the quality of failure that counts.
October 3, 2017
Whitman’s collection of war poetry illustrates the innate progressivism and romanticism of the era.
January 29, 2024
Çeviri kötüydü ve çok fazla yazım hatası vardı. Pek de keyif alamadım o yüzden :/
December 31, 2016
Poetry that reads more like prose, t's pretty obvious where Walt goth is inspiration. An interesting portrait of the Civil War
February 20, 2022
Walt Whitman published Drum–Taps, a collection of poetry about the Civil War, in 1865, while the writing of the collection began in December of 1862. The Battle of Fredericksburg took place in Virginia on December 11–15, resulting in a severe Union setback. George Whitman, Whitman's brother, was a Union soldier in the conflict. Whitman rushed from Brooklyn to Washington, D. C., dreading the worst and hoping to see George healing in one of the impromptu hospitals put up throughout the city. When Whitman arrived at the capital, he searched for his brother for days but was unable to locate him. Whitman then obtained a military permit, allowing him to proceed to the Union camp at Falmouth (near Confederate-held Fredericksburg), where he found his brother, who had sustained a minor wound. While at Falmouth, Whitman worked burying the soldiers still lying dead on the Fredericksburg battlefield.
Drum-Taps is about preserving and healing the Union with its emphasis on brotherhood of both North and South. "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" grates on contemporary ecological creeds by exhorting Americans to cooperate in pioneering westward to clear-cut "primeval forests." In the poetry promising the Union's future, a philosophy of American dominion intrudes. One of the poems that moved me in a personal way was "When Lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd." It is one of the poems in Drum-Taps most emblematic of Whitman's genius, and most thoroughly explains the lines finishing "Song of Myself": "Failing to fetch me at first maintain encouraged, / Missing me one spot search another, / I pause someplace waiting for you."
Drum-Taps is about preserving and healing the Union with its emphasis on brotherhood of both North and South. "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" grates on contemporary ecological creeds by exhorting Americans to cooperate in pioneering westward to clear-cut "primeval forests." In the poetry promising the Union's future, a philosophy of American dominion intrudes. One of the poems that moved me in a personal way was "When Lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd." It is one of the poems in Drum-Taps most emblematic of Whitman's genius, and most thoroughly explains the lines finishing "Song of Myself": "Failing to fetch me at first maintain encouraged, / Missing me one spot search another, / I pause someplace waiting for you."
March 10, 2025
i read this for my 400 level english class and that’s probably the only scenario where i would willingly read walt whitman…
and as it turns out, i’m not mad at it… but i didn’t find myself particularly enjoying the words i read either.
this would be a typical 3 star rating if it weren’t the man, walt whitman, himself. which isn’t to say i dislike him but i had high expectations for whitman which weren’t met— hence the 2 stars (2.5 if goodreads had .5 ratings)
i will say, however, there were quite a few quotes that i did highlight, some of which i’m choosing to gatekeep, and two of which i’m sharing here:
something about this evoked a sense of sonder in me…
holy gay and conceited (me)
with his “manly affection,” whitman manages to exert themes of presumptuous nationality (with a side of ptsd)
and as it turns out, i’m not mad at it… but i didn’t find myself particularly enjoying the words i read either.
this would be a typical 3 star rating if it weren’t the man, walt whitman, himself. which isn’t to say i dislike him but i had high expectations for whitman which weren’t met— hence the 2 stars (2.5 if goodreads had .5 ratings)
i will say, however, there were quite a few quotes that i did highlight, some of which i’m choosing to gatekeep, and two of which i’m sharing here:
”One turns to me his appealing eyes—(poor boy! I never knew you,
Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you.)”
something about this evoked a sense of sonder in me…
”Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me?
Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow, to understand?
Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand—nor am I now;
—What to such as you, anyhow, such a poet as I?—therefore leave my works,
And go lull yourself with what you can understand;
For I lull nobody—and you will never understand me.”
holy gay and conceited (me)
with his “manly affection,” whitman manages to exert themes of presumptuous nationality (with a side of ptsd)
Read
December 6, 2023And the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me,
And the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me;
Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and
still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated.
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)
Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,
Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?
And sullen hymns of defeat?
But when my General pass'd me,
As he stood in his boat and look'd toward the coming sun, I saw something different from capitulation.
Enough, the Centenarian's story ends,
The two, the past and present, have interchanged,
I myself as connecter, as chansonnier of a great future, am now speaking.
And the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me;
Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and
still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated.
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)
Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,
Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?
And sullen hymns of defeat?
But when my General pass'd me,
As he stood in his boat and look'd toward the coming sun, I saw something different from capitulation.
Enough, the Centenarian's story ends,
The two, the past and present, have interchanged,
I myself as connecter, as chansonnier of a great future, am now speaking.
September 1, 2024
“Keep your splendid silent sun,
Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards,
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;
Give me faces and streets—give me these phantoms incessant and
endless along the trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes—give me women—give me comrades and
lovers by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day—let me hold new ones by the hand every day!
Give me such shows—give me the streets of Manhattan!
…
Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!
O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the
torchlight procession!
…
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.”
Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards,
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;
Give me faces and streets—give me these phantoms incessant and
endless along the trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes—give me women—give me comrades and
lovers by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day—let me hold new ones by the hand every day!
Give me such shows—give me the streets of Manhattan!
…
Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!
O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the
torchlight procession!
…
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.”
June 1, 2019
Phantoms, welcome, divine and tender!
Invisible to the rest, henceforth become my compan-
ions;
Follow me ever! desert me not, while I live.
Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living! sweet
are the musical voices sounding!
But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead, with their silent eyes.
Dearest comrades! all now is over;
But love is not over—and what love, O comrades!
Perfume from battle-fields rising—up from fœtor
arising.
Perfume therefore my chant, O love! immortal Love!
Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers.
Perfume all! make all wholesome!
O love! O chant! solve all with the last chemistry.
Give me exhaustless—make me a fountain,
That I exhale love from me wherever I go,
For the sake of all dead soldiers.
Invisible to the rest, henceforth become my compan-
ions;
Follow me ever! desert me not, while I live.
Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living! sweet
are the musical voices sounding!
But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead, with their silent eyes.
Dearest comrades! all now is over;
But love is not over—and what love, O comrades!
Perfume from battle-fields rising—up from fœtor
arising.
Perfume therefore my chant, O love! immortal Love!
Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers.
Perfume all! make all wholesome!
O love! O chant! solve all with the last chemistry.
Give me exhaustless—make me a fountain,
That I exhale love from me wherever I go,
For the sake of all dead soldiers.
July 16, 2025
Es un poemario que me gustó más que el tan celebrado "Leave of grass". Tiene poemas más cortos y más contundentes. Por momentos tiene muchos cantos y odas a las milicias, pero aún así te lleva a un sentimiento de amor profundo por la libertad y la democracia. Tiene pequeños guiños sensuales y sexuales hacia los soldados del ejército, lo que lo hace más interesante para la época. Al final se pone simplemente maravilloso.
Lo leí en inglés, lo que recomiendo porque en los poemas la potencia en la elección de las palabras es importante, aunque no me gustó (al menos en la versión que leí) que al final un grupo selecto te explique poema a poema; no somos niños.
Lo leí en inglés, lo que recomiendo porque en los poemas la potencia en la elección de las palabras es importante, aunque no me gustó (al menos en la versión que leí) que al final un grupo selecto te explique poema a poema; no somos niños.
May 13, 2024
A bit better than LEAVES OF GRASS but only slightly. I don't think Walt Whitman is for me. It feels like he's more concerned with the audience and profitability of his work than any kind of legitimate statement about American life and death. I much prefer when authors prioritize restraint over maximalism. Also, Whitman's neutrality about slavery here, given that these are his Civil War poems, is strange and rather cowardly. Still, there are some interesting ideas and images in here about Christianity and memory.
November 10, 2022
This is a collection of poems written by Walt Whitman during the civil war, reflecting his personal experiences as an up close witness/civilian observer of Union soldiers in camp, in battle, and in hospitals with the wounded (of both sides). These poems show his love of and compassion for the young men who risked and often lost their lives in the Civil War. (Note: this and other editions is available free thru LibroVox.)
July 11, 2023
Not as enjoyable as Leaves of Grass, that's for sure. Though, still some glimpses of wisdom can be found amidst the warring surroundings. A beacon of hope:
"O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,
Nor the bayonet stab what you really are;
The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,
Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill,
Nor the bayonet stab O friend."
"O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,
Nor the bayonet stab what you really are;
The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,
Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill,
Nor the bayonet stab O friend."
July 24, 2019
Picked this up at The Morgan Library after sailing through its Walt Whitman and Democracy exhibit. Nice to have these poems separated from Whitman's later editions of Leaves of Grass. Whitman is mere observer here, or yet, a storyteller not Whitman, in these poems that refelect his expereinces of the Civil War--what he saw, what he felt, what he envisoned. PErsonal ,yes, but not the song of oneself, but the song of us, the song of America and union and worry and death and depsair and, ultimately, of hope.
April 6, 2021
to me Leaves of Grass and Drum Taps are like the ying & the yang, put together something like the Book of Living and Dying.. Drum Taps is painful and incredibly moving.. Walt Whitman took care of wounded soldiers during the u.s.a. civil war, not only physically, but also emotionally.. experiencing war through the eyes of a poet is a life changing experience... Whitman manages to connect with the beauty and the peace that rest in and beyond death...x
July 31, 2023
"I swear I see what is better than to tell the best, It is always to leave the best untold."
Isn't Whitman emphasizing the ineffable nature of certain experiences, acknowledging that there are moments so profound and sacred that they defy description ? I felt so.
This book conveys the unspeakable truths of war through the power of poetry.
Isn't Whitman emphasizing the ineffable nature of certain experiences, acknowledging that there are moments so profound and sacred that they defy description ? I felt so.
This book conveys the unspeakable truths of war through the power of poetry.
Read
January 12, 2026Another great set of poems that I’m sure I’ll absorb better over time. Hard for me to go with star ratings on any of Whitman’s work. Some of it is brilliant and some of it is plain but it all feels important.
At least I’ve now got his Library of America collection (got it discounted from Half Price Books.)
At least I’ve now got his Library of America collection (got it discounted from Half Price Books.)
January 25, 2019
Whitman’s Drum Taps is the closest thing we will ever possess to knowing what the Civil War Battlefield experience was like. His view was as good as any video that could have been taken, and he fills us in with all the emotion: bloody and raw and devastated.
March 8, 2019
Walt Whitman is an awful over rated poet. His poetry deserves only 1 star.
But in this particular book his poetry deals with what he saw during the US civil war, as a civilian and later as a medic; and so the books rating is being rounded up for its value as a historical document.
But in this particular book his poetry deals with what he saw during the US civil war, as a civilian and later as a medic; and so the books rating is being rounded up for its value as a historical document.
September 27, 2021
Glad to read it in this form (2nd edition) and with the notes and in the context of my other Civil War reading. There are single poems I enjoy, but mostly I read this to round out my knowledge of 19thC literature.
May 12, 2022
A fascinating collection detailing the Civil War. This edition is very well edited and the annotations truly add to the collection (which is not always the case); the annotations are short and informative, adding proper context and insight into the meanings of the poetry.
May 12, 2021
Very moving, and especially so in this age when the country seems ready to rip itself apart again.
March 20, 2023
One of the best poetry books!
June 20, 2023
Powerful. Haunting. Should be read every Memorial Day and Veteran's Day.
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