By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame
By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame - context Summary
Composed During the Civil War
Written amid the American Civil War and collected in Drum-Taps, Whitman’s poem records a wartime camp scene and the poet’s inner procession of thought. Drawn from his hospital visits and encounters with soldiers, the poem links external details—the bivouac fires, tents, and moving figures—to private meditations on life, death, home, and loss. Its quiet, elegiac atmosphere places personal feeling alongside the larger experience of war.
Read Complete AnalysesBY the bivouac’s fitful flame, A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow;—but first I note, The tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and woods’ dim outline, The darkness, lit by spots of kindled fire—the silence; Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving; The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me;) While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts, Of life and death—of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away; A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground, By the bivouac’s fitful flame.
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