From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and side falling head,
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the
    bloody stump,
And has not yet look’d on it.

I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,
But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking,
And the yellow-blue countenance see.

I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound,
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening,
    so offensive,
While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail.

I am faithful, I do not give out,
The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,
These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast
    a fire, a burning flame.)

4
Thus in silence in dreams’ projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,
Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad,
(Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested,
Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)

} Long, Too Long America

Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and
    prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing,
    grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children
    en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv’d what your children en-masse
    really are?)

} Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun

     1
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling, Give me autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard, Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows,
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape,
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching
    content,
Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the
    Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can
    walk undisturb’d,
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman of whom I should never tire, Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the
    world a rural domestic life,
Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears only, Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal
    sanities!

These demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and
    rack’d by the war-strife,)
These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city, Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets, Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time refusing to give me up, Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul, you give me forever faces; (O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries, see my own soul trampling down what it ask’d for.)