Walt Whitman's "Look Down Fair Moon"

"Look Down Fair Moon" is a powerful, albeit brief, poem that can be found in the "Drum Taps" section of "Leaves of Grass." It is a poem about the beautiful and somber moon shining down upon a field where dead bodies are strewn. Because the poem is so short, I will include it in the following paragraph:

"LOOK down fair moon and bathe this scene,
Pour softly down night's nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen,
purple,

On the dead on their backs with arms toss'd wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon (Whitman)."

The first thing that struck me about this poem was it's use of the word nimbus, especially because it is used twice (Whitman). Dictionary.com defines nimbus as "a shining cloud sometimes surrounding a deity when on earth." I find this to be particularly interesting because it seems to suggest the spirituality of these corpses laying on the battle field. If nimbus means a cloud that surrounds a deity when on earth, that seems to suggest the importance of the things which the moon was surrounding. If this is the case, this means that Whitman believes that when a person dies he or she takes on a kind of holy aspect. This would flow along well with Whitman's idea that there is a spiritual afterlife that comes after death. This is a perfect example of Whitman demonstrating the ideas of spirituality and Christianity in his writings. The Christian faith teaches that when a person dies he is given a new heavenly body that is holy. This would fit along well with this idea of a body warranting a nimbus light to surround it.

According to Randall Huff, during the American Civil War certain battles would drag on for many days at a time. As a result of this, oftentimes corpses had to be left where they fell on the battle field due to a lack of ability to go back and pick them up. The author of this analysis believes that this poem is based upon Whitman's plea for the moon to look down on such battlefields and clean and purify the bodies of the wounded (Huff). Whitman does not specify or speak out for either side of the war, he simply wants all of the bodies to be purified equally (Huff). This idea of wanting to respect and honor the dead when the accepted way of doing this is not possible is also incredibly spiritual and respectful. In this poem Whitman shows the way that he believes in the purification and spirituality of death and how it is also an important part of life.

The second line of the poem also struck me when reading it, particularly the sequence of the adjectives describing the corpses. It seems as though they are being described as the speaker gets steadily closer. First he simply sees that they are ghastly, then that they are swollen, and finally he sees that they are purple (Whitman). I think this is an important image because it draws the reader to the scene and makes one feels as though they are there (Whitman).

Selected Bibliography

Huff, Randall. "'Look Down Fair Moon'." The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CPAP0247&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 11, 2011).

Whitman, Walt. "Look Down Fair Moon." The Walt Whitman Archive. Web. 11 Mar. 2011. .