17 pages • 34 minutes read
Walt WhitmanVigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1865A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Night and Day
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.
Regeneration
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. Most significantly for “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night,” Whitman shared the transcendentalist belief in the harmony between humanity and nature. In “Song of Myself, 6 [A child said, What is the grass?],” for instance, Whitman wrote:
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd (Lines 28-30).
He concludes this same poem with the lines, “All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier” (Lines 31-32). These lines parallel the thoughts of the speaker of “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field one Night” in his refusal to mourn his friend’s death with tears or eulogies. Instead, he focuses on the world around him, which he finds tranquil even amid the death that surely surrounds him this night. The speaker views this as “vigil I never forget” (Line 24)—a moment in time when he can reflect on the friend he “shall surely meet again” (Line 17), both in a potential afterlife but also in the form of “[t]he smallest sprout [which] shows there is really no death” (“Song of Myself, 6 [A child said, What is the grass?]” Line 28). As the transcendentalists believed in the interrelation between humanity and the natural world, here Whitman suggests that even the burial of “my son and my comrade” (Line 2) will lead to eventual rebirth and regeneration.
Parent-Child
Whitman’s speaker refers to his friend as “son” four times and as a “boy” twice, symbolizing the closeness of their connection. As explained above, the origin of this poem can be found in a similar, non-familial, relationship as well. In the 19th century, Whitman implied homoeroticism in guarded, coded language; the use of these phrases substitutes for a direct address of the theme. Similarly, the speaker sees himself in a caretaking role: “I could not save you, swift was your death” (16). Finally, the act of preparing the body for burial is presented in parent-child terms: “I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form, / Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and carefully under feet” (Lines 19-20). With minor alterations, this final act could just as easily be him preparing his “son” for bed as for burial.
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By Walt Whitman
