The Wounded by Walt Whitman

A march in the ranks hard-pressed, and the road unknown; / A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness; / Our army foiled 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 / odour of blood; / The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms of soldiers -- the yard outside / also filled; / 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 odour; / 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, as ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks, / The unknown road still marching.