Red Badge Poetry Assignment #3
Poem:
A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown
Walt Whitman
A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown;
A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness;
Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating;
Till after midnight glimmer upon us, the lights of a dim-lighted building;
We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building;
’Tis a large old church at the crossing roads—’tis now an impromptu hospital;
—Entering but for a minute, I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made:
Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps,
And by one great pitchy torch, stationary, with wild red flame, and clouds of smoke;
By these, crowds, groups of forms, vaguely I see, on the floor, some in the pews laid down;
At my feet more distinctly, a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen,)
I staunch the blood temporarily, (the youngster’s face is white as a lily;)
Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o’er the scene, fain to absorb it all;
Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead;
Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odor of blood;
The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms of soldiers—the yard outside also fill’d;
Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating;
An occasional scream or cry, the doctor’s shouted orders or calls;
The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches;
These I resume as I chant—I see again the forms, I smell the odor;
Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, Fall in;
But first I bend to the dying lad—his eyes open—a half-smile gives he me;
Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the darkness,
Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,
The unknown road still marching.
1. Explain how the poem narrator’s interaction with “the dying lad” compares/contrasts with Henry’s interactions with his fellow soldiers throughout the novel who desperately need his help. 2. Identify the vocabulary word from Gray Group A that appears in the poem. Explain how Whitman uses this adjective. Vocab word is sullen 3. Identify the word from Yellow Group B that appears in this poem, but not as an adjective. Explain what the word means when Whitman uses it as a verb. Vocab word is staunch 4. The poem is loaded with imagery based on four of the five senses. Determine which sense is missing and add it to his poem in a way Whitman might admire. (In other words, channel the spirit and style of Whitman and add a line that could go somewhere inside the larger poem.) 5. “The unknown road” mentioned in the poem’s final line has a lot in common with the unsure path Henry faces at the end of each chapter, especially as the war progresses. How so?
