Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night

In “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night,” nighttime symbolizes peace—when the speaker is “reliev’d” (Line 6) from battle—and relaxation, as “cool blew the moderate night-wind” (Line 8). The speaker passes “sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours” (Line 11) alongside the body of his fallen comrade. But when dawn comes, he must turn his attention to the duty before him. The line directly following “the dawn appear’d” (Line 18) begins the true preparations for burial: “My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form” (Line 19). By the time the sun rises, “my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited” (Line 21). At the conclusion of the poem five lines later, the speaker is prepared to return to his company and, therefore, to the trials of war.

When Whitman’s speaker considers his fallen friend, he insists, “I think we shall surely meet again” (Line 17). While this meeting may be literally taken in the sense of life after death, in light of Whitman’s interest in transcendentalism it can also be viewed as a form of earthly renewal and regeneration. Though Whitman is not directly associated with transcendentalism, as his biographical connections to—and affinity for—Ralph Waldo Emerson make clear, Whitman adopted some of the movement’s tenets.