Hush’d Be the Camps Today
Hush’d Be the Camps Today - context Summary
Composed for a Commander's Death
This short Drum-Taps lyric records a moment of military mourning after a commander’s death. Whitman stills the camps, calls soldiers to sheath weapons, and asks the poet to voice their grief as the coffin is closed. The poem functions as a communal elegy rooted in Civil War camp life, emphasizing collective loss, the end of personal struggle for the fallen leader, and the need for song to console surviving comrades.
Read Complete Analyses1 HUSH’D be the camps to-day; And, soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons; And each with musing soul retire, to celebrate, Our dear commander’s death. No more for him life’s stormy conflicts; Nor victory, nor defeat—no more time’s dark events, Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky. 2 But sing, poet, in our name; Sing of the love we bore him—because you, dweller in camps, know it truly. As they invault the coffin there; Sing—as they close the doors of earth upon him—one verse, For the heavy hearts of soldiers.
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