Drum Taps | Page 3

little
upwards. With his head so poised and the whole man fixed in contemplation of the
interlocutor he seemed to pass into a state of absolute passivity ... the glassy eyes half
closed, the large knotted hands spread out before him. He resembled, in fact, nothing so
much as "a great old grey Angora Tom," alert in repose, serenely blinking under his
combed waves of hair, with eyes inscrutably dreaming.... As I stood in dull, deserted
Mickle Street once more, my heart was full of affection for this beautiful old man ... this
old rhapsodist in his empty room, glorified by patience and philosophy.
Whitman was then sixty-five. In a portrait of thirty years before there is just a wraith of

that feline dream, perhaps, but it is a face of a rare grace and beauty that looks out at us,
of a profound kindness and compassion. And, in the eyes, not so much penetration as
visionary absorption. Such was the man to whom nothing was unclean, nothing too trivial
(except "pale poetlings lisping cadenzas _piano_," who then apparently thronged New
York) to take to himself. Intensest, indomitablest of individualists, he exulted in all that
appertains to that forked radish, Man. This contentious soul of mine, he exclaims
ecstatically; Viva: the attack! I have been born the same as the war was born; I lull
nobody, and you will never understand me: maybe I am non-literary and un-decorous.... I
have written impromptu, and shall let it all go at that. Let me at least be human! Human,
indeed, he was, a tender, all-welcoming host of Everyman, of his idolized (if somewhat
overpowering) American democracy. Man in the street, in his swarms, poor crazed faces
in the State asylum, prisoners in Sing Sing, prostitute, whose dead body reminded him
not of a lost soul, but only of a sad, forlorn, and empty house--it mattered not; he opened
his heart to them, one and all. "I see beyond each mark that wonder, a kindred soul. O the
bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend."
The moon gives you light, And the bugles and drums give you music, And my heart, O
my soldiers, my veterans, My heart gives you love.
"Yours for you," he exclaims, welding in a phrase his unparalleled egotism, his beautiful
charity, "yours for you, who ever you are, as mine for me." It is the essence of philosophy
and of religion, for all the wonders of heaven and earth are significant "only because of
the Me in the centre."
This was the secret of his tender, unassuming ministrations. He had none of that
shrinking timidity, that fear of intrusion, that uneasiness in the presence of the tragic and
the pitiful, which so often numb and oppress those who would willingly give themselves
and their best to the needy and suffering, but whose intellect misgives them. He was that
formidable phenomenon, a dreamer of action. But he possessed a sovran good sense.
Food and rest and clean clothes were his scrupulous preparation for his visits. He always
assumed as cheerful an appearance as possible. Armed with bright new five-cent and
ten-cent bills (the wounded, he found, were often "broke," and the sight of a little money
"helped their spirits"), with books and stationery and tobacco, for one a twist of good
strong green tea, for another a good home-made rice-pudding, or a jar of sparkling but
innocent blackberry and cherry syrup, a small bottle of horse-radish pickle, or a large
handsome apple, he would "make friends." "What I have I also give you," he cried from
the bottom of his grieved, tempestuous heart. He would talk, or write letters--passionate
love-letters, too--or sit silent, in mute and tender kindness. "Long, long, I gazed ...
leaning my chin in my hands, passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours, with you,
dearest comrade--not a tear, not a word, Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my
son and my soldier." And how many a mother must have blessed the stranger who could
bring such last news of a son as this: "And now like many other noble and good men,
after serving his country as a soldier, he has yielded up his young life at the very outset in
her service. Such things are gloomy--yet there is a text, 'God doeth all things well'--the
meaning of which, after due time, appears to the soul." It is only love that can comfort the
loving.
He forced nothing on these friends of a day, so many of them near their last farewell. A
poor wasted young man asks him to read a chapter in the New Testament, and Whitman
chooses that which describes Christ's Crucifixion. He "ask'd me to read the following

chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very