“Fit for War”: Rhythm and Bodily Health in Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps

Abstract

At the end of the short-lived first edition of Drum-Taps (1865), Walt Whitman looks back over the last few years of war, as if from the end of a long life: Not youth pertains to me, Nor delicatesse-I cannot beguile the time with talk; Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant; In the learn'd coterie sitting constrain'd and still-for learning inures not to me; Beauty, knowledge, fortune, inure not to me-yet there are two things inure to me; I have nourish'd the wounded, and sooth'd many a dying soldier; And at intervals I have strung together a few songs, Fit for war, and the life of the camp. 1