Camden Annotation

This poem is a reminiscence of a reminiscence, a story Whitman claims to have heard in childhood, about the last words of a veteran of the Revolutionary War. With these last words, the veteran recounts the imagery of battle, and demands to have his “war-days” back at the expense of peace for everyone. By beginning the poem with “Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity,” Whitman intends to contrast the peaceful present with the violent past. The following line, “Amid the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum,” might simply echo the previous line, but “songs” is a word now closely connected to Whitman’s own poetry by this point in Leaves of Grass, and it would seem that “current” signifies the poetry he is currently writing at this point in his life. His description of these “current songs” reveals a much different Whitman than is expressed in his earlier works—at "peace" with death, with a changed perception of “beauty,” and a formerly unknown desire for “decorum.” Most beguiling is Whitman’s virtual lack of overt judgment about the dying veteran, and one must look to the lines mentioned above, as well as the surrounding poetry in this section in order to find this judgment. There is certainly much description about the veteran's character—“queer,” “savage,” “spiritualistic”—but these judgments are cast as part of the story Whitman had been told and, therefore, they are not Whitman’s judgments, but the judgments of the original storyteller. Whitman’s only obvious personal judgment about this man and his dying words can be found in the parenthetical, “(likely ‘twill offend you).” One familiar with Whitman’s feelings about war as expressed in much of his poetry would assume that he, too, would be offended by the man’s desire for violence. But now that we’ve established a drastic change in Whitman’s own character expressed by the second line, and considering the poet’s rapid aging and poor health, it becomes possible that the poet could, somewhat, identify with this man. Why else, after all, might he tell the story? Although the theory above is plausible, the opposite seems far more likely when considering the surrounding poetry in this section. Whitman celebrates death as an evolutionary voyage, as an essential part of life with which he is now at "peace," and he has accepted the endlessly forward movement of life. Clearly, Whitman finds an old man's desire to be young again, to resist the natural order of things, "savage," offensive, undecorous, and-- particularly in the case of this veteran, who would wish war upon all people in exchange for the return of his own youth--utterly selfish.

In this poem, Whitman reflects back to the days of the American Civil War, echoing sentiments from "Drum Taps" of essential equality between the soldiers of the North and South, and reforming those sentiments into "meanings to the future." "While not the past forgetting, To-day, at least, contention sunk entire" -- Whitman acknowledges that the conflicts of the past, which divided the North and South, certainly remain at the forefront of the nation's memory "to-day." But to what does "to-day" refer? The following lines indicate that "to-day" signifies the end of the war, as Whitman recollects it, when despite the perpetuation of Northern and Southern divisiveness, "contention sunk entire," the fighting ceased completely, with "peace, brotherhood" taking its place -- for "to-day, at least." The "sign reciprocal," or the symbol that mutually applies to the soldiers of the North and South, is what "lay on the graves of all dead soldiers": "Wreaths of roses and branches of palm." Roses, of course, are a timeless symbol of love, but wreaths of roses carried a different symbology in ancient Rome. At public games they were given as prizes, and were worn as crowns upon the heads of heroes. In the same era, roses were also planted in cemeteries, often at the direction of a dead Roman's will. Clearly, all of these historic symbolisms resonate with the greater context of Whitman's poem. The palm branch carries equally significant symbolism. Referring again to the Pre-Christian Roman era, it was a symbol of triumph and victory, given as rewards in public games and in celebration of military successes. In addition, early Christians "used the palm branch to symbolize the victory of the faithful over enemies of the soul, as in the Palm Sunday festival celebrating the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem." Clearly Whitman's inclusion of these symbols are incredibly apt, as their many meanings all apply to the fallen soldiers he memorializes in this poem. However, he insists that the poem does not merely memorialize, that it is not "for the past alone," but "for meanings to the future." Whitman has reiterated what he had to say in his account of the war written decades before, but has reformed it, perhaps in an attempt to polish a clearer legacy of the war to leave for the future that would follow after him.