Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy — John Shaqi
Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My FancyWhitman, Walt
History
Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy
Whitman, Walt
American literature
The sun rises, but shines not. The men appear, at first sparsely and
shame-faced enough, then thicker, in the streets of Washington--appear
in Pennsylvania avenue, and on the steps and basement entrances. They
come along in disorderly mobs, some in squads, stragglers, companies.
Occasionally, a rare regiment, in perfect order, with its officers (some
gaps, dead, the true braves,) marching in silence, with lowering faces,
stern, weary to sinking, all black and dirty, but every man with his
musket, and stepping alive; but these are the exceptions. Sidewalks
of Pennsylvania avenue, Fourteenth street, &c., crowded, jamm'd with
citizens, darkies, clerks, everybody, lookers-on; women in the windows,
curious expressions from faces, as those swarms of dirt-cover'd return'd
soldiers there (will they never end?) move by; but nothing said, no
comments; (half our lookers-on secesh of the most venomous kind--they
say nothing; but the devil snickers in their faces.) During the
forenoon Washington gets all over motley with these defeated
soldiers--queer-looking objects, strange eyes and faces, drench'd (the
steady rain drizzles on all day) and fearfully worn, hungry, haggard,
blister'd in the feet. Good people (but not over-many of them either,)
hurry up something for their grub. They put wash-kettles on the fire,
for soup, for coffee. They set tables on the side-walks--wagon-loads
of bread are purchas'd, swiftly cut in stout chunks. Here are two aged
ladies, beautiful, the first in the city for culture and charm, they
stand with store of eating and drink at an improvis'd table of rough
plank, and give food, and have the store replenished from their house
every half-hour all that day; and there in the rain they stand, active,
silent, white-hair'd, and give food, though the tears stream down their
cheeks, almost without intermission, the whole time. Amid the deep
excitement, crowds and motion, and desperate eagerness, it seems strange
to see many, very many, of the soldiers sleeping--in the midst of all,
sleeping sound. They drop down anywhere, on the steps of houses, up
close by the basements or fences, on the sidewalk, aside on some vacant
lot, and deeply sleep. A poor 17 or 18 year old boy lies there, on the
stoop of a grand house; he sleeps so calmly, so profoundly. Some clutch
their muskets firmly even in sleep. Some in squads; comrades, brothers,
close together--and on them, as they lay, sulkily drips the rain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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