Look Down, Fair Moon
Look Down, Fair Moon - context Summary
Composed Amid the Civil War
This short lyric addresses a compassionate, witnessing gaze—the moon—over a Civil War field. Whitman asks the moon to flood light on wounded and dead soldiers, using sacred imagery to sanctify the scene. The poem reflects his experience as a wartime nurse and fits the Drum-Taps collection’s focus on the human cost of battle, combining tenderness, solemnity, and a public act of remembrance.
Read Complete AnalysesLOOK down, fair moon, and bathe this scene; Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen, purple; On the dead, on their backs, with their arms toss’d wide, Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.
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