A Sight in Camp

A SIGHT in camp in the day-break grey and dim,
As from my tent I emerge so early, sleepless,
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air, the path near by the hospital
tent,
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there, untended
lying,
Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket,
Grey and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.


Curious, I halt, and silent stand;
Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest, the first,
just lift the blanket:
Who are you, elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-grey'd hair,
and flesh all sunken about the eyes?
Who are you, my dear comrade? 10

Then to the second I step--And who are you, my child and darling?
Who are you, sweet boy, with cheeks yet blooming?

Then to the third--a face nor child, nor old, very calm, as of
beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man, I think I know you--I think this face of yours is the face
of the Christ himself;
Dead and divine, and brother of all, and here again he lies.

-Walt Whitman


In this quarter of HumCore we have been doing a lot of reflection on works of art and to me, poetry is a work of art like any of the paintings and sketches analyzed in class. A past teacher once told me that every word a writer inserts is deliberate and must be recognized when thinking about the text. I believe that this especially true in poetry as they are often shorter than novels, so the emotions are more compact and attention to details such as punctuation is necessary.


The overall tale of this poem is that of "a sight in camp", a glimpse of this specific moment of the war. While reading it I envisioned that the world was frozen in time and then Whitman practically walked through the scenery and wrote of what he saw. The poem starts with Whitman exiting his tent and seeing three bodies near the hospital tent. These three bodies come from men of different age groups; a small child, a young man, and an older gentleman. Whitman reaches the old man first, then the small child, and lastly the young man.


The main concept I got from this piece is the age groups, I believe that age is shown to not only evoke empathy from the reader but also to show that murder in war has no discrimination. Everyone falls victim to the violence. In reading the words, "Who are you, sweet boy, with cheeks yet blooming?", that was the moment everything sunk in for me. Whitman states that the boy's cheeks have yet to bloom, the child has not even gotten to adolescence yet and his life was taken away. The shortness of life, the lack of experience, shown here in these words provides insight to the treachery of war. Although Whitman speaks of an older and younger man, it was really the child that sparked the most emotion out of me. Ultimately, as a whole Whitman covers the fact that all three of these people no matter how much they got to live all had to succumb to a brutal death.