Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night

Whitman’s dramatic monologue opens with inverted syntax: “Vigil strange I kept on the field one night” (Line 1). This inversion of the traditional sentence structure—which might read, “I kept a strange vigil on the field one night”—unsettles readers and makes them feel the disorientation of battle, especially during the American Civil War. Similarly, the speaker blends his relationship with his fallen friend in Line 2, calling him “my son and my comrade.” Most contemporary scholars agree that the use of the word son is designed to show the bond between the two men—not to indicate an actual familial relationship.

The men share one last look, “which your dear eyes return’d with a look I shall never forget, / One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground” (Lines 3-4). While avoiding mawkish sentiment, these lines are indicative of the tenderness between the men in their final moment together. The war must go on, however, and the speaker “sped in the battle, the even-contest battle” (Line 5), which introduces one of the poem’s most noteworthy conventions: repetition. The word vigil is repeated 12 times in the poem, and many other words and phrases also recur, as the word “battle” does in Line 5. Similarly, in Line 7, the speaker adds a parenthetical to the end of the line—“never again on earth responding”—that he repeats in Line 23. This implies what the speaker states later in the poem: Though they will never see each other again in human form, they will be reunited at a later time.

The bond between the men is so deep that though the speaker “[f]ound you in death so cold dear comrade,” he reflects on “your body son of responding kisses” (Line 7). Here, Whitman introduces homoeroticism between men illustrating the intimacy of their relationship, which often occurs in his poetry. Interestingly, though the men are this close, the speaker never falls prey to sentimentality, maintaining a stoicism making the poem more powerful. The speaker’s detachment is such that he can distance himself from the moment enough to note, “in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind” (Line 8). Though he remains in his “[v]igil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night […] not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh” (Lines 10-11).

Soon after, Whitman alters the latter line: “not a tear, not a word, / Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier” (Lines 13-14). As previously noted, the speaker refers to his fallen friend in a variety of ways—son, comrade, solider, boy. Here, he combines the earliest reference to “my son” (Line 2), an intimate connection, with the cause of his death: his role as a soldier. The repeated insistence “not a tear” implies the reality of war: Anyone can die at any moment in battle, and the speaker is best able to objectively deal with such a possibility. Instead of falling apart in mourning, he views the situation as the wages of battle. The war must continue, even without his friend, the “brave boy” (Line 16).

The parenthetical concluding Line 16 and continuing through Line 18 provides the central turn in the poem. Like the volta of a sonnet, this interruption in the flow of the monologue signals a shift in the speaker’s feelings. For just as the speaker “could not save you, swift was your death, / I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall surely meet again” (Lines 16-18), he realizes the end of their earthly relationship has arrived. The parenthetical gives way to the second-to-last reference to “[m]y comrade” (Line 19); from here, the dead soldier is almost exclusively referred to in third person. The parenthetical, with its direct address to the “you” of the fallen friend, serves to signal the severed bond between the men, as one remains among the living and the other is “wrapt in his blanket” (Line 19) in preparation for burial.

The focus remains on the fallen and not the speaker, as Whitman limits the use of the first-person “I” throughout the section detailing the actions he takes in preparing the body:

My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form,

Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully under feet,

And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited (Lines 19-21).

Once again, Whitman inverts the syntax so that the final first-person pronoun comes near the end of Line 21, creating a passive voice that obscures the speaker’s centrality in favor of his activities in service to honoring his “son” (Line 20).

This moment concludes the speaker’s “vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-field dim” (Line 22). Whitman repeats the word “vigil” once more before the end of the poem, again emphasizing the activity rather than the speaker; though he is active throughout—sitting with the body, preparing it for burial, digging the grave—the speaker’s role in the final four lines is limited to “never forget[ting]” (Line 24) and rising “from the chill ground and fold[ing] my soldier well in his blanket” (Line 25).

The final line’s simplicity—“And buried him where he fell” (Line 26)—belies its import. As he has done in almost every case since the parenthetical in Lines 16-18, the speaker refers to his comrade in third person. This diminishes the intimacy still present as late as the penultimate line, where the speaker refers to his friend as “my soldier” (Line 25). The speaker leaves him “where he fell” (Line 26), and presumably returns to life—and the war—after this brief respite. Based on the number of causalities from every battle during the American Civil War, readers can imagine that the speaker is not the only soldier taking part in such a vigil. Once again, however, the speaker is so fixated on this moment that he remains unaware of the carnage around him, remaining vigilant to his “son and […] comrade” (Line 2).