Calvary Crossing a Ford Reflection

This reflection will be over Walt Whitman's poem "Cavalry Crossing a Ford". I would like to fist start out by saying this poem was written in 1865 (Poetry), which means it was written in the time during the civil war. Knowing this the poem begins to become more understandable and clear to the reader. The poem describes how they looked in comparison to other things. In other words he was using a lot of descriptions that did not exactly go with it but inferring it's about the soldiers it actually is very creative. For instance, in line two Walt Whitman says "They take a serpentine course—their arms flash in the sun". (Whitman) The author does not mean that their "arms" were flashing in the sun, he meant their guns. This shows how Walt Whitman used creative writing to make something such as war not so gruesome as it truly was. A man by the name of Max Nardau wrote in his literary criticism over Walt Whitman's poetry "He is morally insane, and incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, virtue and crime." (Nordau) This to me explains why he doesn't go into any true gruesome details of how bad the civil war, and almost makes it sound beautiful. Walt Whitman gives even a pretty picture of the army by the river when he says, "Behold the silvery river—in it the splashing horses, loitering, stop to drink". (Whitman) This portrays to me a beautiful scene of horsing in the water with the sun shining with their owners standing near by gazing into the beautiful river. This is the opposite of most of Thoreau's because Thoreau would use the gruesome details to get the point across that he wanted to get to his readers. For example in Thoreau's writing "Civil Disobedience" he writes about the army as well but he says "In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well." (Thoreau), which portrays a much different picture of the soldiers. As Whitman liked to keep things happy and soulful, Thoreau tended to take the more realistic and yet very pessimistic route. Although is see little relation to Thoreau, I do see some to the great Emerson. The ideas of having such admiration of nature and looking at the little things in life is very much an Emerson-like writing style. In the very first line of "Cavalry Crossing A Ford" he displays his simplistic naturalistic writing style when he says "where they wind betwixt green islands". (Whitman) All in all Whitman was a writer that liked to stay on the lighter side of things while still hitting the political topics of the time, without having to be to politically one sided nor to involved in the specific details of the politics.


Nordau, Max. Degeneration, 1895: 230–32. Quoted as "On the Poetry of Walt Whitman" in Bloom, Harold, ed. Walt Whitman, Classic Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCVWaW040&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 9, 2012).


Poetry for Students. "Cavalry Crossing a Ford Study Guide - Walt Whitman - ENotes.com." ENotes - Literature Study Guides, Lesson Plans, and More. Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved, 2012. Web. 09 Feb. 2012. .

Thoreau, Henry D. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - with Annotated Text." The Thoreau Reader. Richard Lenat, 2009. Web. 24 Jan. 2012. .

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Philadelphia: David McKay, [c1900]; Bartleby.com, 1999. www.bartleby.com/142/. [2/9/12].