{
 "id": "walt-whitman/a-march-in-the-ranks-hard-prest-and-the-road-unknown",
 "title": "A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 157,
 "container": "Drum-Taps",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1865,
  "venue": "Drum-Taps (New York, 1865)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1865 Drum-Taps scan. The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/waltwhitmansdrum00whit"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "drum-taps.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 25,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 110,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu hospital,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Entering but for a minute I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and clouds of smoke,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor, some in the pews laid down,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I stanch the blood temporarily, (the youngster’s face is white as a lily,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o’er the scene fain to absorb it all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odor of blood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also fill’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An occasional scream or cry, the doctor’s shouted orders or calls,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the odor,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, fall in;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But first I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half-smile gives he me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the darkness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The unknown road still marching.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}