© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
The Artilleryman’s Vision
by Walt Whitman
While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over
long,
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight
passes,
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the
breath of my infant,
There in the room as I wake from sleep this vision presses upon me;
The engagement opens there and then in fantasy unreal,
The skirmishers begin, they crawl cautiously ahead, I hear the
irregular snap! snap!
I hear the sounds of the different missiles, the short
t-h-t! t-h-t!
of
the rifle balls,
I see the shells exploding leaving small white clouds, I hear the great
shells shrieking as they pass,
The grape like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees,
(tumultuous now the contest rages,)
All the scenes at the batteries rise in detail before me again,
The crashing and smoking, the pride of the men in their pieces,
The chief-gunner ranges and sights his piece and selects a fuse of
the right time,
After firing I see him lean aside and look eagerly off to note the
effect;
Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging, (the young colonel
leads himself this time with brandish’d sword,)
I see the gaps cut by the enemy’s volleys, (quickly fill’d up, no
delay,)
I breathe the suffocating smoke, then the f lat clouds hover low
concealing all;
Now a strange lull for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either side,
Then resumed the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls and
orders of officers,
Source 2: Poem
Background:
Walt Whitman’s “The Artilleryman’s Vision” describes the nighttime
dreams of a Civil War veteran after the war has ended.
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1. Analyze
2. Practice
3. Perform
