moving “in dreams’ projections” from one critically wounded patient to
another. He recalls the very kinesthetic “feel” of the experience as he
moves “with hinged knees” (a repeated phrase) from bed to bed: “I on-
ward go, I stop”; “On, on I go.” Most of his patients have sustained
wounds to the limbs. In that distant era before the general use of anti-
biotics, when few doctors practiced sterilization, wounds to the extremi-
ties frequently became infected or gangrenous, and so proved fatal to the
patient. As the persona compulsively relives these heart-rending scenes,
he invites the reader to witness his ministrations and to “follow without
noise and be of strong heart.” Whitman’s language is economical and
bleak:
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 ¤ll’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and
¤ll’d again.As he moves from bed to bed the persona stoically dresses the soldiers’
wounds to the head, side, shoulders, and limbs; many of them are ampu-
tations. Doctors frequently ordered the removal of injured extremities as
a life-saving procedure to avoid the possibility of gangrene and fatal in-
fection. (Nevertheless, the infections often persisted and proved fatal.)
Meanwhile, the persona barely manages to control his empathy with the
soldiers’ suffering.
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 ¤re, a burning ®ame.)Although the poem does not re®ect the nature of Whitman’s service
during the war, it epitomizes his dedication to these young men and boys,
182 / “Come Sweet Death!”