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Walt Whitman - A March In The Ranks, Hard-prest
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A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown;
A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness;
Our army foil`d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating;
Till after midnight glimmer upon us, the lights of a dim-lighted
         building;
We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted
         building;
`Tis a large old church at the crossing roads—`tis now an impromptu
         hospital;
—Entering but for a minute, I see a sight beyond all the pictures
         and poems ever made:
Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and
         lamps,
And by one great pitchy torch, stationary, with wild red flame, and
         clouds of smoke;
By these, crowds, groups of forms, vaguely I see, on the floor, some
         in the pews laid down;                                       


At my feet more distinctly, a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of
         bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen 
I staunch the blood temporarily, (the youngster`s face is white as a
         lily 
Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o`er the scene, fain to absorb
         it all;
Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity,
         some of them dead;
Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether,
         the odor of blood;
The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms of soldiers—the yard
         outside also fill`d;
Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the
         death-spasm sweating;
An occasional scream or cry, the doctor`s shouted orders or calls;
The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the
         torches;
These I resume as I chant—I see again the forms, I smell the
         odor;                                                        


Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, Fall in;
But first I bend to the dying lad—his eyes open—a half-smile gives
         he me;
Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the darkness,
Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,
The unknown road still marching.
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