To One Shortly to Die
To One Shortly to Die - context Summary
Composed During the Civil War
Written amid Whitman’s Civil War involvement and first printed in Leaves of Grass (1860), this short poem addresses a person facing imminent death. The speaker speaks plainly and lovingly, insisting on blunt truth but offering physical and spiritual consolation. Rather than pity, he celebrates the transition as release and absolution, excluding others’ sorrow and reframing dying as a solitary, inevitable passage accompanied by intimate presence.
Read Complete Analyses1 FROM all the rest I single out you, having a message for you: You are to die—Let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate, I am exact and merciless, but I love you—There is no escape for you. Softly I lay my right hand upon you—you just feel it, I do not argue—I bend my head close, and half envelope it, I sit quietly by—I remain faithful, I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor, I absolve you from all except yourself, spiritual, bodily—that is eternal—you yourself will surely escape, The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious. 2 The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions! Strong thoughts fill you, and confidence—you smile! You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick, You do not see the medicines—you do not mind the weeping friends—I am with you, I exclude others from you—there is nothing to be commiserated, I do not commiserate—I congratulate you.
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