Poetry Review – Walt Whitman – The Sleepers Verse 4

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1855 In verse three Whitman described a dream-lie vision of a single beautiful man drowning. Verse four extends on that to show his vision of a terrible wartime shipwreck. The vessel is witnessed by the narrator who stands on a sandy beach, feeling sea spray splashing his face. A cannon roars from a fort on the land and the ship is blown apart in the blast. The writer describes how no one makes it ashore alive and how he assisted in carrying the corpses to a nearby barn. Whitman worked as a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War so he certainly saw a great deal of suffering and death. Arthur Chappell