“step down to the Unknown World alone” while he is “looking on water,
sun, and hill, / As on their Maker’s face.” The imagery of departing this
life in nature’s bosom, solitary and content, so appealed to Whitman that
it reappears in “Death’s Valley,” one of his last poems.^23
“Revenge and Requital,” one of the sentimental tales that young Whit-
man composed, casts an eerie light on the man who would later become
a legendary hospital volunteer. The tale dramatizes Whitman’s fascina-
tion with New York’s “humane institutions” and foretells the devoted
volunteer who will be drawn to the sick and dying in the hospitals of
New York and Washington. During one of the cholera epidemics that
struck the city, we are told, many residents ®ed; but others, whom the tale
calls “God’s angels,” stayed behind to succor the af®icted. One such “an-
gel” anticipates the image of the sel®ess “wound-dresser” of Drum-Taps
and the later Whitman’s own devotion to the hospitalized soldiers who,
according to his own testimony, he rescued from abandoning their will
to live.
There were the men and women [“God’s angels”], heedless of
their own small comfort, who went out amid the diseased, the
destitute, and the dying, like merciful spirits—wiping the drops
from hot brows, and soothing the agony of cramped limbs—
speaking words of consolation to many a despairing creature, who
else would have been vanquished by his soul’s weakness alone—
and treading softly but quickly from bedside to bedside—with
those little of¤ces which are so grateful to the sick, but which
can so seldom be obtained from strangers.... .One among them
seemed even more devoted than the rest. Wherever the worst
cases of contagion were to be found, he also was to be found. In
noisome alleys and foul rear-buildings, in damp cellars and hot
garrets, thither he came with food, medicine, gentle words, and
gentle smiles. By the head of the dying, the sight of his pale calm
face and his eyes moist with tears of sympathy, often divested
death of its severest terrors.... And when he wandered through
the most wretched streets and alleys of the city [at night] his
well trained ear caught those familiar sounds, those wailings of
anguish and fear, how unerringly would he direct his feet to the
spot whence they proceeded. There, like an unearthly help, vouch-Introduction / 17