to the soldiers and would sooth them and take care of them while they were basically dying. In doing this, he was very close to many of the dying soldiers. Throughout the rest of the poem the reader gets the sense that Whitman felt he was in the battlefield too. This is because the poet was so close to the fallen men, he felt he was fighting the battle also and he conveys this to the reader. Whitman's feeling about the soldiers can be seen by looking at "The Wound-Dresser." In lines 37-38 Whitman writes, "I never knew you / Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you." In this passage Whitman is showing the reader how he feels about not only the soldiers but also death. In this point in his life, Whitman has finally come to terms with death. He is willing to die for the soldiers, people he only knows as soldiers, not personal friends. It appears to the reader that Whitman looks at death as a good thing. As almost a relief. This assumption can be confirmed by looking at the poem "Song of Myself." In line 130 Whitman wrote "And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier." This shows that Whitman believes that death is a good thing. That someone is lucky to die. He is saying that death is a better place. This idea probably came from his time as a wound-dresser. He saw so many men dying terrible deaths, and he knew that death had to be better than the suffering they were incurring. Whitman's personal ideas and feelings about dying being lucky can also be seen by looking at his poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Boolm'd." This poem is an elegy for the assassinated President Lincoln. The following lines share the same theme of death.But I saw they were not as was thought,They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'dAnd the armies that remained ...
