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Poetry Manuscripts

Table of Contents

[Leaf 1 recto]

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describe a group of men coming off the

field, after a heavy battle, the grime,

the sweat, _^ some half naked the torn & dusty clothes,

their own mothers would not recognize

them—

The moon rises _^ silently over the battle field

but red as blood, coming above the

smoke—you look over the field, you

see little lights moving around, stopping & moving

around again, they are searching for the wounded, & bringing

they are bringing off the dead

At Gettysburgh, the second day of the battle,

our troops drove the secession army from

a position they had occupied, & where the

preceding night, they had gathered their dead—

the an dea d lay in certain parts spots of the field

piled three or four deep where the had placed them,

to be burial ready for burial the next n m orning.

Date: Whitman wrote this manuscript sometime after the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) and probably before the end of the Civil War in April 1865.

Editorial note: The verso of the manuscript leaf has what may be either a single note written at two different times or two separate notes: "Poems in works (Camden" and "III: 289." The writing is presumably that of an archivist or some other non-Whitman hand(s).

Location: incidents for (Soldier in the Ranks) | Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

The Walt Whitman Archive