Here are two links to the full text of Drum Taps, where the three poems were published.
Click here for one version (a facsimilie of the original publication); click here for the other (just the text).
"Beat! Beat! Drums!" (1861/1867)
- In poems like, “Beat! Beat! Drums!,” Whitman emphasizes the importance that the message of current events be delivered to every corner of the nation . . . —“over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets; / […] no sleepers must sleep in those beds, / […] then the rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow[.]” [I]n evangelizing the song of the bugles and drums, Whitman is desperately communicating that the sound of the war should echo loudly, that the people should know what goes on in their country, that not even those in prayer, or brides with their grooms shall be comfortably ignorant.
- I believe that this piece was written to empower the soldiers of the war and the cities affected by and involved in the war. The author calls for the drums to disrupt the daily and peaceful lives of civilians, saying “Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow! / Through the windows-through doors-burst like a ruthless force, / Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation, / Into the school where the scholar is studying; / Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with / his bride, / Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering / his grain,” (Whitman 1.1-8). This seems to me like the author is saying there can be no peace in anyone’s life while war is waging. Whitman is demanding the attention of civilians be turned away from their everyday lives and towards the fight, telling the drums to “Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,” (Whitman 3.2), almost as if people are inevitably going to feel burdened or inconvenienced by the seemingly impertinent, but rightfully tumultuous sounds of war.
Note that the speaker in the poem is urging the drums to beat (or the drummers to beat them) and the bugles to blow (or the buglers to blow them) and their recruiting message to "burst like a ruthless force into the solemn church." The footnote in the Norton anthology reports that "Beat! Beat! Drums!" "served as a kind of recruiting poem when it was first printed in September 1861 . . . having been composed after the Southern victory at the first battle of Bull Run" and "Whitman's initial aim was propagandistic" (1145).
Question for further consideration: What is the difference between art and propaganda? What role does the intention of the author play in that differentiation?
"Cavalry Crossing a Ford" (1865/1871)
- Though it is short in length, “Cavalry Crossing a Field” is a poem that offers a portrait of a cavalry stopping along a river to rest, to drink, to pose in the sun like army figurines, their bright-colored uniforms catching the sun in their “serpentine course.” We can imagine that for a moment, Whitman is observing the troop in beautiful . . . stillness, . . . they are picturesque and still[:] “Behold the silver river, in it the splashing horses loitering and stopping for a drink, […] / Scarlet and blue and snowy white, / The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind[.]” [T]his image is a stark contrast to the crimson colored portrait of war, of a battlefield. If a thoughtful writer-eye were to stop alongside the cavalry, he might find a moment in time to relish the life that surrounds him, knowing that all-too-soon, it will be torn apart, ripped away, and left to glisten in the sun upon a wetter, redder . . . earth.
- The poem is short, and just details a group of people and horses crossing a river. This poem is so simple that it can be summarized in one short sentence, but the beauty of this poem is that, rather than saying a group of people and horses cross a river, Whitman uses descriptive imagery to paint a picture for the reader. He uses lines like “They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun—hark to the musical clank,” and “Scarlet and blue and snowy white,/The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind.”
- . . . the experience of reading “Cavalry Crossing a Ford” is akin to looking at a painting, as he almost exclusively delivers vivid descriptions and provides no further context other than that the reader should “Behold” (1145). In a single verb, he makes us imagine the faces of many unique men marching to war, and the readers can infer that many of them may not be marching back.
Unlike "Beat! Beat! Drums!," "Cavalry Crossing the Ford" does not have a clear message or moral lesson it wants to convey. One of the reasons a poem like this one is still valued today is that it anticipated modern Imagist poetry comprised of clear images that gave readers room to make inferences (or not to).
"The Wound Dresser" (1865/1881)
- Walt Whitman also engages with a similar style of ‘showing not telling’, as “The Wound-Dresser, disputes the war-effort by describing painful scenes such as “The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through I / examine, / Hard breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eyes, yet life struggles / hard.” (1147)
- “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 the 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” (1147).
- In [“The Wound-Dresser”] Whitman’s choice to write from the first-person perspective illuminated the horrors of the battlefield. For instance, when he says, “I onward go, I stop, with hinged knees and steady hand to dress wound; 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.)”
- In these poems, Whitman . . . is telling stories as a human observer, rather than an impartial entity, paying mind to the fact that in battle, much more is lost and gained than independence, or territory—it is a vast expanse of emotional complexity, urgency, and unfortunate beauty.
- . . . the patients he caresses and dresses and cares for are a source of emotional insight, and moreover, they are people, boys, he loves and accompanies. It is evident that each wound and each soldier is more than a wound or wounded man; Whitman writes, “I am faithful, I do not give out, / The fractured 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.).”
- Whitman cared for his patients. For instance, Whitman uses phrases such as, “my wounded” to demonstrate his feelings of responsibility and concern towards the injured soldiers (1146). This thought is also conveyed later in the poem when Whitman states that he “could not refuse this moment to die for you (the soldier), if that would save you” (1147). It conveys how Whitman takes these injuries as a personal failure even if he could not have done anything to prevent them.
Question for consideration: Might he have felt somewhat responsible due in part to his support for recruiting efforts at the start of the war?
Consider lines 4-6 of this poem: "(Aroud'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;)"
• He used very illustrative language and easily created images in the mind of the reader. “I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot withthe bullet-wound, / Cleanse the one with gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so/offensive.” I think he described these disgusting things to show the reader how terrible the conditions were, how real the experiences were. Whitman wrote this poem to show the real side of the civil war, the parts that would be left out in history textbooks.
- “The Wound-Dresser" poem . . . has antiwar themes by sharing imagery of the wounded soldiers through the eyes of a war nurse, "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,". The gruesome imagery of blood and terrible wounds throughout the poem makes the reader question whether war is worth the sacrifice.
Question for consideration: Might someone consider inclusion of a poem that shows the horrors of war to be a kind of propaganda that doesn't belong in an impartial history book? Would it be necessary to balance such a poem with one that glorifies the heroism of the soldiers?
• One really captivating line is “poor boy! I never knew you,/ Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you” (section 2). This both wonderfully portrays human compassion, and possibly the Christian gospel of someone laying down his life for another.
Note the differing view of Christianity presented in this week's reading from Moby-Dick (chs. 8-11) and from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
• Whitman also mentions how the lower classes suffer from the war while the rich are not directly affected by it because “the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on”(1146). The rich make a profit off of war while not experiencing any of the pain, suffering, or trauma that comes with it. This is supported by Whitman discussing the “priceless blood” of soldiers that should not be used to ‘strengthen’ the economy or expand the pockets of rich men (1147).
Question: Does it matter if we call them "the lower classes" as opposed to "the working classes"?
• Whitman begs for the death of some of the soldiers, because death would be merciful. He writes “(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!/In mercy come quickly.)”
Note a similar theme in "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."
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