twist of good strong green tea, for another a good home-made
rice-pudding, or a jar of sparkling but innocent blackberry and cherry
syrup, a small bottle of horse-radish pickle, or a large handsome apple,
he would "make friends." "What I have I also give you," he cried from the
bottom of his grieved, tempestuous heart. He would talk, or write
letters--passionate love-letters, too--or sit silent, in mute and tender
kindness. "Long, long, I gazed ... leaning my chin in my hands, passing
sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours, with you, dearest comrade--not a
tear, not a word, Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son
and my soldier." And how many a mother must have blessed the stranger who
could bring such last news of a son as this: "And now like many other
noble and good men, after serving his country as a soldier, he has
yielded up his young life at the very outset in her service. Such things
are gloomy--yet there is a text, 'God doeth all things well'--the meaning
of which, after due time, appears to the soul." It is only love that can
comfort the loving.

He forced nothing on these friends of a day, so many of them near their
last farewell. A poor wasted young man asks him to read a chapter in the
New Testament, and Whitman chooses that which describes Christ's
Crucifixion. He "ask'd me to read the following chapter also, how Christ
rose again. I read very slowly, for he was feeble. It pleased him very
much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He ask'd me if I enjoy'd religion.
I said 'Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you mean, yet maybe, it is the
same thing.'" This is only one of many such serene intimacies in
Whitman's experiences of the war. Through them we reach to an
understanding of a poet who chose not signal and beautiful episodes out
of the past, nor the rare moments of existence, for theme, but took all
life, within and around him in vast bustling America, for his poetic
province. Like a benign barbaric sun he surveys the world, ever at noon.