I close this season
of political comment
as any of us would.
We, I believe, know
the unveiled bigotry
in the stab-in-the-
back mode of polit-
ical address; and we
know the endless vul-
garity of its thrill.
Humanity recoils in
prayer for our angels.
We have seen this race proved
by wholesale, by drearier, yet
more fearful tests - the wound,
the amputation, the shatter'd
face or limb, the slow hot fever,
long impatient anchorage in bed,
and all the forms of maiming,
operation and disease. Alas!
America have we seen, though
only in her early youth, already
to hospital brought. There have
we watched these soldiers, many
of them only boys in years -
mark'd their decorum, their re-
ligious nature and fortitude,
and their sweet affection.
Wholesale, truly. For at the
front, and through the camps,
in countless tents, stood the
regimental, brigade and division
hospitals; while everywhere amid
the land, in or near cities, rose
clusters of huge, white-wash'd,
crowded, one-story wooden barracks;
and there ruled agony with bitter
scourge, yet seldom brought a cry;
and there stalked death by day and
night along the narrow aisles be-
tween the rows of cots, or by the
blankets on the ground, and touch'd
lightly many a poor sufferer, often
with blessèd, welcome touch.
Walt Whitman
Collect
Democratic Vistas
1892
Complete Poetry and
Collected Prose
Justin Kaplan, editor
Library of America, 1982©
